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Strategies & Market Trends : MDA - Market Direction Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John who wrote (81795)	9/15/2001 12:30:27 PM
From: Ira Player	Respond to of 99985

? If they go from a 2.0 GHZ processor to, say, a 5.0 GHZ processor, they will have missed the profits they could have made by releasing 2.33 GHZ, 2.5 GHZ, 2.67 GHZ, 3.0 GHZ, et cetera processors along the way. It is a pretty transparent operation. Do you have any idea how the semiconductor business is structured? Earlier in your post you said "It is about money." That is the only statement I agree with, but definitely not for the reasons you stated. Intels production is currently utilizing 180 nm technologies. That supports the 2.0GHz product they have announced commercially. They have shown a demonstration system with device fabricated at 130 nm technologies running at 3.5GHz. If Intel could economically produce 3.5GHz processors, they would be on the shelf tomorrow. That would be a death knell for their competition. They do not, not because they don't want to, but because the cost of producing those devices would not be supported by the price they could charge. Semiconductors are the ultimate example of mass production. You need an incredible numbers of devices (smaller line widths increases the number of transistors per unit area, larger wafer sizes increase the area operated on per step in the fabrication process) produced at high yield to make the purchase of the expensive production equipment cost effective. During the research efforts, a few 3.5GHz devices can be produced in small quantities at very high cost per item. They are used to prove the technology and as a demonstration of things to come. Are they useful? Not very. Does available memory technology and bus structures support efficient feeding of this 3.5GHz beast? No. So you never see the real speed benefit because the infrastructure is not yet in place to capitalize on it. No conspiracy theory. Just economics. Ira