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Technology Stocks : Cymer (CYMI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Walt Street who wrote (16359)	4/6/1998 3:14:00 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	Respond to of 25960

This announcement by National Semi of a CPU on a chip by June 1999 will light a fire under Intel's "Smart Integration" program. As I posted a month ago, I believe the demand for "computers" is about to explode exponentially as "computers" become cheap and embeded in all products, voice recognition and response as one use. The Wall Street Journal 4/6/98 pg A3 points out that "Many of today's chips have circuits about 0.35 micron.. that's enough for about 7 million transistors on a chip. ...0.18 microns allows for 100 million transistors enough to handle all computer functions on a single chip." "Used in a conventional portable computer, the PC on a chip could enable a machine to last for nine hours on battery power. National Semi's Chairman envisions the product creating appliance-like computers that are compact and cheap... The PC disappears just the way electric motors are invisible in our lives."

To: Walt Street who wrote (16359)	4/7/1998 9:34:00 AM
From: Bryan Steffen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25960

RE: The days of high profit margins are gone, unless chip makers cut production costs big time and accelerate production. This means much cheaper computers, but many more of them as sub $500 computers will make the "PC in every home" vision a reality . I don't think you would find many people to disagree with this comment. The concern I have is the impact of this move for the semiconductor companies and equip manufacturers like Cymer. Some will argue that it is a good thing. I would argue that it will slow the semi companies' advance to new equipment/smaller architectures. My reasoning is this. 1) As cheaper PCs create greater market penetration, they create tremendous margin pressure. 2) In order to combat margin pressure the Intels of the world pump more volume. 3) They will also try to stretch any given processor's market life as long as possible. Therefore that means a slower advance toward smaller architectures. I don't think we're talking about years in delays, but maybe Moore's law gets pushed back to 19.5 months instead of 18. Cymer of course will still participate in the moves to smaller architectures. But it means that we won't see the results of that until later this year and into 1999. Maybe this is the reason for NYCNPBBKR comment: Rumor has it that Cymer is going to beat earnings estimates this report but will warn on the next 2 quarter's earnings. Message 3955223 Bry