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Technology Stocks : Orckit (ORCT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kevin Hay who wrote (1148)	4/26/1998 7:51:00 PM
From: savolainen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1998

[dspg/orctf] hi kevin, fwiw... will give your dspg/orctf question a shot... please forgive if you know a lot of this stuff... couldn't tell from your post... orctf's current adsl lsi silicon (2nd generation) uses a dspg oak core... this is the silicon in product now shipping to gte... but this is not to say that orctf buys a physical product from dspg... orctf is using a design of dspg's for a subsystem in their silicon...... don't know what sort of royalty/licensing agreement has been agreed upon... it has not been revealed whether the next generation orctf/fujitsu adsl silicon will be using dspg... tho it looks quite likely as fujitsu licensed the oak core last year after orctf and fujitsu announced their next generation adsl silicon efforts... the pivotal question at this point would seem to be how good this next generation adsl silicon will be... time will tell soon enuf... due q3 or q4... think it stands a chance of being (darkhorse) best-of-class... if this is true,... orctf is holding one heck of a hand ...and dspg potentially stands to profit nicely (?)... if there are problems... the picture may not be as pretty... back to gte... margins there for orctf seem to be a function of volume and timeframe.... it will be "better" for orctf if things take a little while to ramp up (as telechoice is predicting).. so that several cost reduction programs now in the works will have a chance to phase in... and the major one is... the new fujitsu/orctf chip... it was described in the last conference call as a "very low cost adsl chipset..." ... a couple of conference calls ago... in a silicon update, tamir felt the new chip would... "meet target for cost, schedule and product function..." also importantly, power requirements for the new chip will be reduced significantly... from the current chip @ 1.5 watts... as you know from the dspg cc... dspg is focusing on getting power requirements down as well so that fits... (but then again this is an issue for everyone)... the new adsl silicon is very ambitious in terms of integration of functionality... personally think both orctf and fujitsu are up to the task... until the last couple of years orctf was primarily a telecommunications contract engineering house... their thing was "complex development tasks in extremely short development cycles" ...lots of big guys sought out their expertise... (known) list includes comstream, national semiconductor , eci telecom, interdigital, pcsi, pactel, teletrac, geotek, brooktree, and general datacom... orctf claims 9 successful chipsets todate... when the silicon partnership with fujitsu was announced, must admit that i didn't really think of fujitsu as a silicon heavyweight (shows you what i know)... but since then have changed my mind.. their 96 semiconductor sales put them @ #8 in the world.... not only are they heavy into memory, but also do the whole range of microprocessors (eg they are a principal supplier of sun's sparc microprocessor...), microcontrollers etc etc ... for the adsl ll chip, fujitsu is handling the mixed signal side... primarily @ their mixed signal centre at Maidenhead, UK... as another sidenote am keeping an eye out for action on the g.lite silicon front... orctf is much more active there than is currently widely known... and it seems likely that when it takes off.. the market for g.lite silicon could be substantial... orctf has said they are not interested in pursuing the consumer end... for the consumer side they will make their $ thru silicon... which of course leads to the question of who might end up working with them for consumer stuff... reputedly "one of biggest in the business" ... and unannounced... teakdspcore has been billed as appropriate for g.lite... from the dspg cc. sounds like oak licensees will have to relicense for teak... it doesn't sound like fujitsu has licensed yet.. could be news to watch for.. if teak isn't used for this generation (either regular or g.lite) am expecting that the next generation will.... a couple of month's ago there was a rumor on the pair thread that pair management was very concerned about a japanese adsl "superchip" due out pretty soon ... ... probably a good sign when the competition is worried... ;) and since you're into dspg... seems possible that the new upcoming harris/orctf vdsl silicon might use dspg cores as well (harris has licensed)... and then there is rok/orctf hdsl2 silicon... but there was bad blood between dspg and rok over dvd i believe (rok had to pay dspg settlement)... but would imagine the parties could kiss and make up if it were in their financial/marketplace interests to do so... orctf has done a pretty good job on their website makeover... probably the best place to read-up on who they are and what they have to offer... fwiw i find the quality of their partners reassuring... and these seem to be real partnerships... 50/50 deals... best wishes s