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

To: Hippieslayer who wrote (5876)	1/19/1998 10:55:00 AM
From: Harold Engstrom	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 11555

According to the ALTR profile, they make FPGA chips. This means that the chips they make are programmable - making them very flexible, just like you need when you are developing a product. The logic and timing can be adjusted continually without holding up production for design and fabrication of a "written in stone" gate array. Of course, the cost of a Field Programmable Gate Array is far, far greater than that for an Application Specific Integrated Circuit. Now, IDT says they can develop an ASIC for almost no money and can deliver them in a week. That is cheap and fast and for any company shipping in quantity that is a very big cost savings with very little risk. An FPGA is fine for development, but when you are relatively sure of your design you want an ASIC to reduce your per unit costs. Clear Logic looks like a winner. Please feel free to criticize this explanation.

To: Hippieslayer who wrote (5876)	1/19/1998 12:03:00 PM
From: flickerful	Respond to of 11555

boot.net has a large piece on amd & cyrix with the following inset: ads.imaginegames.com Are There More Than Two Gunmen? While the battle for Socket 7 dominance rages between the three major processor players, other manufacturers have announced plans to bring x86 CPUs to the battlefield. Centaur Technologies plans to unload a Pentium MMX-level processor, the ITC-C6, in mass volume this August, with full-steam production of the chip by March 1998. Coming in at 150MHz, 180MHz, and 200MHz clock speeds, a 233MHz processor is also in the works. The ITC-C6 uses a RISC-like architecture that's optimized for highly used instructions, but what makes this processor unique is its low power draw: <Picture: Centaur Chip> A 20Hz ITC-C6 pulls about 10.6 watts compared to the 15.7 watts pulled by an Intel P200 MMX. Centaur Technologies plans to brutalize Intel with $100 per-part bulk pricing for its 200MHz chip (Intel comes in at $550 for a comparable chip and pricing structure). The 64K of unified L1 cache, and MMX in a small 88mm2 CK, 0.35-micron die cast will make this CPU one to watch.