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

To: Darrell D. Conrade who wrote (7730)	4/6/1998 1:59:00 PM
From: Rob S.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 11555

The overall market opportunities will expand dramatically over the next several years. It's a bit of a situation of "a rising tide lifts all boats" in that IDTI should be able to participate in some of it almost regardless of how well they execute. They don't have to do everything right to grow with the market (and neither does Intel, AMD, NSM, etc.). One of the interesting aspects of how things will develop for the broadening array of products that will make up the interent/PC environment is what effect the merging of graphics, I/O and audio functions into the SOC uP will have on the peripherals players. On one hand the need for separate devices will be done away with. On the other, the market will grow substantially with segments that want specialized or enhanced functionality. USB and Firewire will become a big influence as WIN 98 and peripherals come out to support it. This will be a much simpler and more capable interconnect architecture than the clunky old interrupt driven PC I/O we are used to. Will the peripherals guys flourish or be absorbed into the SOC capability? SOC offers many advantages in power savings, lower cost, simplified manufacture and maintenance and ease of use that should make it a winner over discrete solutions for mainstream applications. That's all still over the horizon but will become a factor next year. This year USB & Firewire gain press coverage and speculative interest but won't be that big a deal on the store shelves IMO. SOC will be something for late '99 and will be very big at the turn of the century. In a few years you will snap open the case on a PC or internet appliance and find very few components; no PCI or ISA cards, in some products a few easy to access memory slots, separate graphics & sound much less common and mouse, keyboard, hard disk, DVD or CD, and video input device peripherals just plugged into the system on the simple USB or IEEE Firewire connector (or running off IRd connection).