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Technology Stocks : Oak Technology (OAKT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: AreWeThereYet who wrote (3712)	12/5/1997 11:48:00 PM
From: Dan Spillane	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4335

Lookie here, AC-3 has been added to the DVD-Video format. Good for OAKT, as they have advanced products in this area? Euro DVD-Video gets a sound upgrade Electronic Engineering Times, Friday, December 05, 1997 at 22:55 (Published on Monday, December 08, 1997 at 00:00) Tokyo - Dolby AC-3 audio will be added to the European version of the DVD-Video format, DVD Forum members said last week at the group's first general meeting here. The spec previously had been limited to MPEG Audio. "The addition of Dolby AC-3 to DVD-Video is an easy way to port existing content" for the European market, said Toshiba Corp. president Taizo Nishimuro.

To: AreWeThereYet who wrote (3712)	12/6/1997 12:07:00 AM
From: Dan Spillane	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4335

Why didn't this OAKT news hit the business wires...it was only in trade news? Oak gets rid of dead wood Electronic Buyers News, Friday, December 05, 1997 at 22:55 (Published on Monday, December 08, 1997 at 00:00) by Mark Hachman Silicon Valley- Continuing the effort to reduce its costs, Oak Technology Inc. has eliminated a third-party component in its CD-ROM controller, replacing it with Oak's own integrated core. Previously, the CD-DSP function in Oak's OTI CD-ROM controllers was manufactured by Sony Semiconductor Corp. of America. The new OTI-9325 24x CD-ROM controller integrates the DSP, servo, block decoder, and audio processor on a single chip. Oak continues to develop high-end products that push the limits of performance to 40x, said Aydin Koc, vice president and general manager of the optical storage unit. The company's strategy is to quickly follow up those products with lower-cost integrated controllers at 24x and soon 32x, Koc added. The OTI-9325 contains features that reduce CD-ROM seek times as much as 20 milliseconds from previous generations, according to Dan Stevenson, marketing manager at Oak's Optical Storage Business Unit, Sunnyvale, Calif. As the CD-ROM drive searches for the proper bit of information, the head must first estimate its distance away from the proper data track as it quickly moves toward or away from the center of the disk in a "rough seek" mode. When the head nears the appropriate track, the chip tells the head to enter a fine-seek mode, literally counting the tracks as it nears the data. The newly integrated DSP and servo controller include acceleration loop profiling and a lens-centering control, reducing those seek times across a wider area of the disk. The OTI-9325's fine-seek mode begins within plus/minus 2,048 tracks of the target. In addition, the chip includes an integrated audio processor with stereo DAC. The other portion of the chip, the block decoder, is based on the existing OTI-912. The chip ships in a 160-pin PQFP and will be sampling in January for $10 in 10,000s.

To: AreWeThereYet who wrote (3712)	12/6/1997 10:55:00 AM
From: Baoho Chang	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4335

Hello, Andy. You raised an interesting question about possible merges between semiconductor companies, such as OAKT, SIII, and so on. Those companies tend to have narrow product lines and limited financial resources. At least in my mind, it makes a lot of sense for those companies to combline to achieve better product diversity, larger market share, and stronger finance. For instance, If SIII and Oak can merge, they can have a much stronger company together. With several acquisitions recently, it looks like it is happening but at a very low pace. Any comments on the subject from every one on the thread is welcome. REgards, Baoho