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Politics : RAMTRONIAN's Cache Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: NightOwl who wrote (4901)	2/26/1998 2:35:00 PM
From: Mark Willis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14464

Hey, it never hurts to speculate. That's what I was doing when I wrote this in October. Message 2327331 I think any additional ESDRAM foundry partners will likely come from companies such as IBM and Siemens which have DRAM manufacturing capability and numerous "in-house" applications throughout their own product lines. Which is to say the market for ESDRAM is not big enough(yet) to merit a foundry only partner for ESDRAM. A case could be made for Toshiba because they share the process technology derived from the IBM/Siemens/Toshiba manufacturing partnership mentioned in the press release. Toshiba has recently separated from the partnership and plans to phase out 16Mb DRAM production sometime in 1999. However, since ESDRAM is currently a "niche" product with potentially higher margins, perhaps Toshiba would find it an attractive transitional product for their current 16Mb equipment. "IBM, SIEMENS AND TOSHIBA ANNOUNCE AGREEMENT TO DEVELOP SECOND GENERATION 64 MEGABIT DRAMS"...May 25, 1994 at: chips.ibm.com "Toshiba Splits With Moto, Siemens On 1-Gigabit DRAM"...January 21, 1998 at: techweb.com "Toshiba Ending 16-Mbit DRAM Production In 1999" techweb.com Motorola holds some potential because of their joint DRAM manufacturing facility, White Oak Semiconductor, with Siemens. They are also developing something together in Germany. Motorola has the "in-house" applications that would benefit from ESDRAM, but I don't know if they would license from Ramtron or just purchase it outright from Siemens. Ulrich Schumacher, president and chief executive officer of Siemens semiconductor division, said: ""definitely" the possibility of collaboration in design work between Siemens and Motorola. Motorola makes smartcards, we make smartcards. Motorola does communications, Siemens does communications, Motorola needs DSPs, Siemens needs DSPs." ... at: techweb.cmp.com SIEMENS AND MOTOROLA ANNOUNCE JOINT VENTURE TO DEVELOP 300 mm WAFER MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY IN DRESDEN, GERMANY smi.siemens.com Mosel-Vitelic also has a manufacturing partnership with Siemens that is based on the process technology derived from the IBM/Siemens/Toshiba alliance. Could be another possibility, but I think it is a foundry only, which would mean little or no "in-house" applications. "Mosel-Vitelic Inc. and Siemens AG have begun offering 64-Mbit DRAMs, which will initially be produced here at ProMos Technologies Inc. The memories use technology that Siemens had developed under an alliance with IBM Corp. and Toshiba Corp"....at: techweb.com We also can't exclude Hitatchi. They have the "in-house" applications and a foundry partnership with Nippon Steel (who is our long lost EDRAM partner and recently an ESDRAM MIA). It's called Hitachi Nippon Steel Semiconductor Singapore Pte. Ltd. (Tampiness, Republic of Singapore). The front runner in my book is TI. As noted in my October post, TI was mentioned as a potential ESDRAM partner in a 6/20/97 Gumport RMTR report and I believe they were using EDRAM to some extent. I think they have somewhere around 40% of the DSP market and that application can utilize a lot of embedded DRAM or should I say ESDRAM. In the conference call, Winterbottom also mentioned TI, but TI was not specifically elaborated upon in Sike's response. Of course NEC's Virtual Channel Memory still scares me and they recently added another memory product that compliments it. Not to mention that VIA has also endorsed VCM. prnewswire.com nec.co.jp It never hurts to speculate( unless you dumped your INTC for RMTR-owch!) Good luck Mark