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Technology Stocks : Semi-Equips - Buy when BLOOD is running in the streets! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (4933)	3/1/1998 1:51:00 AM
From: LLCF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10921

Is TK Kurlak? If so I have to say he's made a couple GREAT calls in the last year! No love lost for the guy here, but man he got some people out of some stuff at a great time! DAK

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (4933)	3/1/1998 4:01:00 AM
From: Clarksterh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10921

Skeeter - he is right now The gist of the article is that he thinks semi companies have entered the mature stage when growth slows down to GDP. Do you really agree with that??!! Especially given the fact that his rationale is that the next major app for PC's is bandwidth limited, not computer limited. Unbelievable stupid thinking on his part. Where does he think that new bandwidth is going to come from? (Hint: It ain't free - ADSL, Cable modems, ...) In addition, I would point out the following problems with predicting the maturation of the semi industry: 1) Bill Gates, somewhat notoriously, said in the early '80s that computers would never need more than 640k of memory. Lesson: it is very, very hard to see the next killer app until it has already run you down. That said, I suspect that for the next 2 or 3 years it may indeed be true that the march will slow for PC's. 2) Does anyone have any idea how much more 'computing power' is in the modern digital cell phones than in the old analog ones? I do not know the answer exactly, but I would bet it is between 10 and 100 times, depending on the technology. (Ask Motorola - they were caught off ballance by the move from RF technology being the limiting factor, to computing power being the long pole.) And as everyone makes the transition to CDMA from TDMA there will be another jump. And as the technology moves to GHz wireless wideband, ... . 3) Within the next three years everyone with cable TV is going to have another computer in their house. And, when they come out with recordable DVD, everyone will have a computer at least as powerful as today's PCs. Compressing video requires massive horsepower. 4) Voice recognition. Again, this requires massive horsepower. 5) Video processing - mainly for games, but still a huge market (ask Sony). We are nowhere near photorealistic. If I had to guess I would say we need at least another 100x improvement in processing speed to get to photorealistic. 6) Video recognition (your car drives itself - a scary thought). HUGE, HUGE horsepower required. etc. Eventually the semi area will mature, but I think it is a very safe bet to say that point isn't here yet. At worst there will be a short transition period as we move from being driven by PC's to signal processing or some other area. Clark