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Technology Stocks : Adaptec (ADPT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RagTimeBand who wrote (1936)	5/10/1998 1:01:00 AM
From: RagTimeBand	Respond to of 5944

Thanks to Shane on the LSI thread for posting the following: From Page One of Electronic News: May 4, 1998 Issue Logic Is Siemen's New Target By Gale Morrison sumnet.com Sandston, Va.--Ulrich Schumacher, Siemens Semiconductors president/CEO, used Tuesday's grand opening crowd here at White Oak Semiconductor to emphasize the unit's new direction. Although Siemens originally conceived the new fab as a DRAM facility, he told the gathering of suppliers, customers and local officials that Siemens Semi will double revenues and quadruple the number of people it employs before 2000 and it will do so through a full-blown "logic offensive" already under way. Peter Bauer, the new president/CEO of Siemens Microelectronics, Inc., the U.S. company, said Siemens goal is to reduce DRAM revenue to just 30 percent of the total, by becoming a pre-eminent ASIC supplier in three high volume areas: communications, computer peripherals (especially mass storage), and ironically for all the collaboration between it and Motorola, automotive. Siemens believes strongly that it can best the competition, which includes NEC across the board, with its ever expanding line-up. Mr. Bauer said that the new Carmel DSP (a competitor to Lucent Micro's Sceptre chipset), its Tri-Core microcontroller (facing Motorola's M-Core microcontroller), and capability for computer storage ICs with this IP and the ability to embed DRAM, are behind his confidence. Adaptec purchased Symbios Logic just last month to gain greater share of that space. Siemens has already taken aim aggressively at the DSP market (EN, Jan. 19). And, it was a sign of strength that Siemens licensed the Carmel DSP core to LSI Logic (EN, April 27), the largest standalone ASIC company. Though Mr. Bauer declined to describe how much of its current and planned business will be internal, he gave the standard answer that internal customers are treated exactly the same as external ones, and Siemens Semi is strictly a merchant supplier. Nevertheless, Siemens is expanding its operations that would consume DSPs--telecom infrastructure equipment and wireless handsets--just as aggressively as it is expanding its semiconductor business. Also, Siemens recently dedicated a Fiber Optics business unit to sell its optoelectronics products into that hot market (EN, April 27). For DRAM, which has become 40 percent of Siemens revenues only because of the drastic price erosion the industry is suffering, White Oak is the fourth memory plant opened in the last two years. One attendee at last week's event noted that "it's a heck of a time to add that much DRAM capacity." Siemens has brand new DRAM lines in Hsinchu, Taiwan, Dresden, Germany, North Tyneside, U.K., and now Sandston, near Richmond. Only White Oak and Dresden are producing 64 megabit DRAM at 0.25-micron geometry. Unanswered is the question whether Siemens can truly best NEC, Motorola and others. NEC may be weathering difficult financial times, but it has an imposing store of IP from decades of deep pocket R&D. And Motorola has new found strength in the automotive market with the MPC555, for which a big German auto company is about to come forward as the customer.