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To: Paul Engel who wrote (38365)	10/30/1997 12:23:00 PM
From: Richard Habib	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

Hello Paul, If you get a chance I'd like to hear your comments regarding the following article from "The Source" "IBM To Unveil 1.1 GHz PowerPC According to a TechWeb article this afternoon, IBM is slated to demonstrate a new 64-bit PowerPC processor capable of clock speed exceeding 1.1 GHz. The demo is expected at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference next February in San Fransisco. Despite the very impressive clock speed, the most interesting aspect of the design is that it is manufactured using a 0.15 micron process. Whether or not this is in any way connected with the Project 2K chips under design at Somerset is unknown." Of course PowerPCs have always outperformed Intel chips but still haven't broken into the mainstream. The wild card in this case may be Apple's Rhapsody OS to be marketed in 98 as "Unity". Interesting name given it will supposedly run Windows, Mac and Next software. My thoughts are that we are approaching another watershed event in computing. If the speed of processors is such that even emulation software enables you to run non-native applications as fast as you can click, consumers are more likely to buy the fastest chip available regardless of platform. I respectfully submit that we may be missing where the competition is going to come from in 1998 and beyond. Rich Habib

To: Paul Engel who wrote (38365)	10/30/1997 5:53:00 PM
From: Jeff Fox	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Paul, re: "crazy story" I looked up his patent. On the face of it looks like there may be merit to the technology. It employs a combination of ferro and piezoelectric materials to form the bit cells, witch sounds like a good idea. Of course a good idea does not make a winning product. If this guy is going to fight with his former employer I suspect others, including Intel, will lay hands off lest they get drawn into a muddle. There is also a little fact of a memory glut these days. I didn't read anything that says this memory will be any cheaper per bit that existing semiconductor memory. It is still a thin film, patterned technology with bit size fixed by metal line resolutions. It will take lots of lab work to make a practical process given that the rest of the fab is exotic material formulations. Assuming that Dr. Gendlin settles his ownership fuss, the next hurdle is to make real product, perhaps a military, or a DARPA funded specialty thing. Good luck to him and/or Kappa Numerics! Jeff