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Technology Stocks : SILICON STORAGE SSTI Flash Mem -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Art Bechhoefer who wrote (1779)	8/28/2001 5:28:23 PM
From: Road Walker	Respond to of 1881

Art, More importantly over Intel or AMD. John

To: Art Bechhoefer who wrote (1779)	8/28/2001 6:03:04 PM
From: docpaul	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1881

Art and John, Let me start by saying it'd be hard not to be at least somewhat biased, as I am currently invested in SST.. not to mention an enthusiast of the company. I have been watching SST's patent stream extremely closely over the past year that I've watched this company. There were so many clues that this was going on in the background.. 1) Acquisition of Agate Semiconductor 2) Seeking out MLC experienced researchers from their website 3) A number of primer patent releases over the past few months relating to larger density memories 4) Their new fab relationships (like with Nanya, and I'll talk about this more below).. This has all seemingly congregated into this patent, which is fairly broad in it's scope.. a few things I've noticed on my first cursory read: 1) the date applied for: Jan. 14, 1999.. closing in on 3 years ago.. implies that a lot of work has been done in the meantime. 2) very specific diagrams of this technology being used in end user devices, such as music players and digital cameras. 3) not limited to flash designs as we know them for SST: states specifically that the technology can be applied to FeRAM, and other types of designs outside of typical SSI (source side injection) flash. The fact that SST has this description implies that they're not limiting themselves to SuperFlash with this, which I found interesting. Agate founders Khan and Korsh (who are coauthors of this patent btw) have stated in press releases that SuperFlash is more ideal for higher density designs than the competition.. so I would suspect that future patents will link the MLC concepts with the SuperFlash cell and manufacturing process in particular. When I first read about the sales of SuperFlash technology and the agreement they made with Nanya Technology Corporation, I was originally kinda caught off guard, b/c those folks are well known for their work on SDRAM and DDRAM (much higher density volatile memories), but I realize now that my sights weren't set high enough. This patent is talking.. about 10bit/cell and up.. a massive leapfrogging from what's been currently talked about in this space. It's clear that Nanya would have something to offer when talking about memory arrays of this size. Now, from a "is this a killer" patent release perspective.. I know without question that SST plans to compete in the high density space now... no longer my reasoned hunch. :) I know that it's the best announcement of next generation high density flash I've read, far ahead of the competition.. but keep in mind what I posted above was written for 1999.. who knows what other patents companies are waiting on at this point? From what I know of SST's cell design compared to the competition, however.. I think the combination of MLC and SuperFlash has a reason to make the Intel's and SNDK's of the world concerned. All the best, docpaul