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Technology Stocks : IDTI - an IC Play on Growth Markets -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gordon Quickstad who wrote (4952)	11/27/1997 9:18:00 AM
From: Hippieslayer	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 11555

The thread is very quiet. You'd think that it was a holiday or something.

To: Gordon Quickstad who wrote (4952)	11/27/1997 4:11:00 PM
From: Rob S.	Respond to of 11555

Different things drive the different markets for mainstream PCs. For the conusumer-home user market it tends to be driven by graphics and game functions, educational programs (which are in many cases similar to games in system demands) and by internet usage which is increasingly graphic and multimedia but it probably 2-4 years away from taking advantage of 3-D and higher speed 2-D graphics capability (no need for high speed graphics while you sit waiting for a web page image to load). The greatest technical advances in consumer market PCs is coming from improved graphics cards. enhanced video, TV-out, and other multimedia sub-systems and software enhancements rather than raw processor power. The first version of MMX (MMX1?) has not had that much impact on performance because there are so few programs that take advanatage of it and because it does relatively little to enhance 3-D performance. MMX2 that will come out of AMD, IDT and Cyrix will put a baseline of high performance 2-D and 3-D graphics capability and help further enhance audio and multimedia inter-operation capability. Increased bus bandwidth and AGP will help move data faster and will show a marked improvement on performance. Still, you will probably find that the performance improvement due to these factors when combined with a P166 or P200 class system will be very acceptable to the "mass market". Speed grades will increase as manfacturers move to 0.25 micron processes next year so that the baseline sub $1,000 system may well be P233 or P266. The cost may actualy come down even further despite this speed bump becase at 0.25 the speed naturally increases while yields improve significantly, thus lower mfg. costs. The consumer will find very capable systems to run games, educational software, WINHOG '95, and internet brousers and multimedia applications. This class of system will be "extreme overkill" for most small/home business applications. New business applications will eventually take advantage of 3-D graphics and multimedia capabilities that will need the power these systems deliver. The most lucrative new potential is, IMO, in entirely new classes of devices, such as WebTV, NCs, NAs, PDAs, VideoPhones, etc. that will use MPUs and connect via the internet. Many of these products have been around in one form or the other for up to several years but have not delivered the compelling set of functionality needed to spur them into widespread mass popularity (there has been some success but I think it will be dwarfed by what is yet to happen). The corporate market wants to get the job done above all else. PCs and NCs that deliver lower cost of purchasing, installing, training, and maintaining networked systems will win out. If systems configured with Cyrix, IDT, or AMD MPUs deliver on the needs for the corporate market, then they will find success. Intel will continue to dominate - "you won't get fired for buying "Intel Inside", but unlike the dominance held by IBM for large-scale main-frame computers, there is no more compelling reason to purchase systems with a particular compenent inside than that based on what functionality, and maintainability it can deliver. Systems manufacturers who put together the best "total systems solution" in conjuction with software providers, like Microsoft, will win customers regardless of whether the box has an Intel Inside sticker on it. I expect that the market for Pentium class MPUs will grow dramatically over the next several years and that IDT, Cyrix and AMD will capture 30%-50% of the overall market. Intel will continue to grow their business but will give up significant share in the traditional PC markets and in the new categories of products.