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Politics : RAMTRONIAN's Cache Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gammaray who wrote (5348)	5/1/1998 3:14:00 PM
From: Gutterball	Respond to of 14464

Japan Rohm Shrs Higher; Correction Seen Having Ended J.RHCTOKYO --Shares of Rohm Co. , a semiconductor manufacturer, are higher Thursday afternoon, briefly touching a year-to-date high of Y14,890, on buying by institutional investors and foreign investors, traders said.

To: gammaray who wrote (5348)	5/1/1998 4:36:00 PM
From: Jonas	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14464

Hi Neil, All! I am overweight in rmtr and I'm down...went in before I even knew Lehman brothers followed them and before I knew about Infrastructure...the reason for going in was EDRAM - I knew there was this 'FRAM-thing' but really learnt most on FRAM on this thread.... As far as the stockprice is concerned people have given up like PAR and sold out...I believe it was in last weekend's Herald Tribune that an article discussed how investors generally drop stocks at the wrong time... Although there are a lot of unknowns to me vis a vis rmtr my subjective/skewed opinion is that rmtr has far less L/T risk than rmbs and also has a higher reward potential - of course I know even less about rmbs I must say...here's my zigzag of chaotic points: nobody expects any earnings miracles from rmtr this year - however I expect developments that will result in EARNINGS VISIBILITY...going forward and as L/Ter the risk in my view is the 'opportunity cost' of holding rmtr as Hiram (by the way I also respect Your views) pointed out....on the other hand there's also a risk of holding currently on-the-roll-stocks & if things turn sour this can be pretty damaging in a high market...IMO as 'part' of a portfolio I don't agree with the opportunity cost position....but might if as part of only a handful of select holdings...we have a buy recommendation on RMBS based on current facts...and have rmtr described as speculative....that has made me think and disagree (again)... A couple of wild thoughts... 1. In-Stat's ...Forcast update RDRAM share of DRAM market 30% by 2000 and close to 50% by 2001...->rmbs decision delayed & scalability problems and commodity alternatives with similar performance coming to the market... from what I know now (repeat sure enough I don't know much) I'd rather bet these forecasts will be revised downwards...I'm not even sure rmbs' current design wins are safe....(If I'm wrong it wouldn't be the first time that I've missed out on a great investment...just because I thought I was smarter..but by 2000 we might have ERDRAM if I am wrong? and I wouldn't loose out?, and we'd also have EDDR &/or ESLDRAM? and we'd have low & high densities? and we'd surely have some more FRAM progress by 2000 ? -> So the chances for ESDRAM appearing in forecasts are not that bad... 2. faintly remember reading an interview with Natsemi CEO saying that as more functions are performed on-chip there'll be less bus traffic...so while we have 100 and possibly later 133 MHz buses coming on the market there's going to be relatively less data that's needs to go through the bus...-or put differently, as MPU performance increases the demands on the bus will not increase in proportion....->I'm absolutely NOT sure at all that this is corect or should I say correct, but if so, then that's another factor delaying the 'need' for rmbs while extending the viability of pre-rmbs platforms...talking about pre-rmbs a 100MHz EDDR would yield 3.2 GB/s ?All this fantasizing leads me to the conclusion that if DDR is evolutionary than EDDR is an evolutionary evolution...and if an evolutionary change is less costly overall and slowed down evolution even less so...we are likelly to have VCM-DRAM but from what I know so far I expect ESDRAM to be able to maintain a value premium in the market... 2. Now I'm very thankful for Doug posting a lot of useful info - and it occured to me that there was 'no news on Mondex'...after one of his 'interviews' If I remember correctly Fujitsu is supposed to come into production this year...but couldn't find any reference to this in my notes - but their development a controller with integrated FRAM might be more that a technological breakthrough...i.e. a commercial basis... cyberflex.austin.et.slb.com cyberflex.austin.et.slb.com Schlumberger's current JavaCard "Cyberflex" consists of an 8-bit controller(based on INTC 8051 or MOT 6805) with an operating system, on top of which there's a Java VM implementation...and JavaCard V. 2 is also planned to contain an 8-bit controller.... The Cyberflex OS requires 8Kb, the interpreter 4Kb, and the API 1.6Kb - using EEPROM there's about 2.8 Kb left for apps + around 200B of RAM...what? of course I don't know what all that means...but as always I've got a hunch... Fujitsu is a licencee of the Picojava chip which I believe could be used instead of the above two controllers..and would not require a Java VM and execute Java faster... javacardforum.org - again I expect I'm onto something even though I don't know...So if there's an nouncement imminent I'd say it's from Fujitsu...although it's about time for some of the other licencees to finally start doing something other than 'researching' I'd say....we're waiting after all... 3. It's said RDRAM dies are 30% larger than those of SDRAM and this can be shrunk somewhat in time....ESDRAM according to one newsreleases is about 5-15% larger and guess can also be shrunk 'somewhat' (and do remember an article - or was it a dream? - some time ago with an expert seeing problems with further die shrinkage due to the internal architecture of of RDRAM) It also occurred to me wherever rmbs marketing chaps appear in the press they've got an answer for everything...they still have a delayed transition agenda because of intc support...INTC however does not control the system - it's part of the system and only arrived where it's today because it manouvered well in the past....the delay was probably another 'correct' move..just as their new MPU introductions are as a result of the new competition 4. FeRam must pay its dues noteworthy perhaps are - "even in low-density there's a billion $ market EEPROM BB-SRAM" - FRAM introduction will happen in steps Perhaps FRAM will only partially replace other memory types in smart cards (at first...) 5. Samsung Joins Hitachi In 256-Megabit Race It seems the big boys are leaving the lower-density field in a hurry...so in the low density area rmtr has less competitors? and with Siemens I'm confident rmtr will soon join the high-density club too... As far as management is concerned, even the best management can't accelerate the growth of the smart-card market or speed of licencees' progress in commercial production I would think...and therefore I don't see what's wrong with the management So the final question I pose is: am I crazy?