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Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stitch who wrote (1893)	12/22/1997 2:29:00 PM
From: John Wang	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9256

Stitch: <Moody lowered Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motors,...debt to Ba1, a notch above junk bonds> <Seoul's agreement with the IMF requires the government to cut economic growth and fiscal spending sharply, raise taxes, close banks if necessary, and tighten liquidity.> infoseek.com:80/Content?arn=a0584LBY247reulb-19971222&qt=samsung&lk=noframes&col=NX&kt=A&ak=news1486 It seems to be difficult for Samsung and Maxtor (Hyundai) to planned fierce expansion of HDD unless they can prove that to be a profitable business. Maxtor seems to buy heads, media and important drive ICs from US companies. Their currency devaluation will make it more expensive for them to buy them. And, these cdomponents constitute a good portion of the HDD cost. This will somewhat offset their capability of lowering HDD price. Besides, who know where they will buy the HDD manufacturing equipment from to expand their growth? From US or Japan? Either way, the cost of start up is going to be higher for them. And, money is becoming more and more difficult to borrow. Without thinking into this, you would have thought that the currency devaluation will work to their favor 100 percent. For US HDD makers that manufacture in Singapore, Malaysia, etc, they got the benefit of lower component and labor cost from Asia. Their cost of US components are not changed. You cannot say that Bob Blair of WDC was wrong. Maybe, there is still life to US HDD makers. John

To: Stitch who wrote (1893)	12/22/1997 3:20:00 PM
From: Gus	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9256

Stitch, Re: Head-Platter-Channel Electronics I agree with you regarding the importance of some kind of control over the heads, platters and the channel electronics. The critical shortages of the past have been in heads and platters. Increased density, however, has also turned the mixed-signal R/W electronics into one of the gating factors. I believe it was Chuck Bleakney who first raised this issue on this board several months ago. Drive designers rely on new technology mix -- Capacity growth harder to come by techweb.com Improved electronics are but one of the stumbling blocks in this path. The pre-amp and read-channel chips that move data coming off the drive's head are already a limiting factor. Though ICs meet the requirements of today's desktop drives, designers of high-end SCSI-compatible drives have to lower disk density to keep from overwhelming the read channel. Re: Next-generation channel electronics Would you know anything about MDFE (Multilevel Decision Feedback Equalizers) and its M2DFE variants? The Data Storage Institute in Singapore seems to be ground zero for the research on this channel recording tech, which DSI is promoting to succeed PRML/EPRML. An international R&D consortium on was lauched on August 1, 1997 to develop a superior channel recording technology, MDFE, to be used in hard disk drives. Members of the MDFE consortium include IBM, Fujitsu, Hitachi,Motorola, Serial System of Singapore and DSI. Here's more background info on MDFE: dsi.nus.edu.sg It's probably too early to hang any kind of time-to-market on this tech but I would appreciate it if you can keep us posted on any developments from where you are across the Pacific. If this industry down cycle is anywhere close to being as vicious as I think it is going to be, the reasonable assumption to make, I think, is that the pace of innovation will pick up considerably. For example, SEG's introduction of the 7200 rpm drives in 1992 was instrumental in their continued dominance of the high-end which in turn allowed them to remain profitable while everybody else was losing money in the 1992-1995 time frame. Already we see IBM and SEG try to bring 7200 rpm drives to the desktop, IBM and Toshiba (along with TDK and Yamaha) accelerate the move to GMR, SEG transition its entire drive lineup to fluid-bearing motors, Maxtor embrace TXN's DSP channel electronics (EPRML) and DSP architecture, RDRT try to increase density at a 70-80% CAGR instead of the industry 60% CAGR, etc... It's the old tech saw: Technology leaders capture higher margins, technology followers compete on price... Thanks, duude. Gus