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Technology Stocks : Microchip technology (MCHP) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank Roso who wrote (305)	4/21/1998 6:57:00 PM
From: Robert Salasidis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 475

The stock has been doing very well since the upgrade on 2/4. Broke some resistance today in the 27.5 range. Was at one of their workshops about a week ago (on the 17c756 chip). Their tools were very good - their new MPLAB-C17 C compiler produces very good code with no bugs uncovered during the workshop by any of the attendees. They will be bringing out a replacement for the PIC MASTER as well that will allow real-time emulation up to 40MHz - this should result in some upgrades by users of higher end chips. As well, their linear address space chips should do well in higher end apps where a C compiler will be used for development - should produce more efficient code than their current paged devices. I think they are responding well to their customers - producing low price/functionality chips and now progressing into higher end 8 bit markets. As far as the issue of microcontrollers being commodity items I think this is only partly true. A designer that will produce a low to medium volume design will most likely use a chip that they are familiar with (and have the tools for already). Therefore market share becomes a self perpetuating event (it is relatively expensive to buy all the new development tools, development hardware, training on the new chips - encouraging the design on new hardware with chips from the same manufacturer). A high volume design however would require the lowest cost microcontroller available - and MCHP has apparently had some difficulty in the past in this category - hopefully their interest in competing in this arena will be maintained - as evidenced by their recent half dollar 8 bit microcontroller offering.