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Technology Stocks : Smart Modular - diamond in the rough? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Robert H. who wrote (1512)	5/30/1998 3:24:00 PM
From: MileHigh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2020

I agree, but NOBODY really knows about the bottom, one must make their own call based upon their risk/reward analysis. I will grant the bears this though, if we go lower it will be a slow drift downward on low volume. The fund managers and MOMO players dumped this baby with the bath water so any downward move will be slow, IMO, barring any catastrophic news which has already been released. I am thinking about selling some covered calls to average down my cost basis. Regards, MileHigh

To: Robert H. who wrote (1512)	5/30/1998 3:33:00 PM
From: MileHigh	Respond to of 2020

Thread, notice bold highlights in article (I placed). If you assume SMOD is one of leaders in quality CEM's and that they will be able to test and support the new Intel 100 MHz bus architecture, then any reduction in qualified CEM's will only give SMOD more business when the rampup occurs! MileHigh May 27, 1998, TechWeb News -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Memory Outlook PC-Driven By DAVID SUN Founder and Vice President Kingston Technology Co. Fountain Valley, Calif. The big news this year in the PC market has been their rapidly falling prices and the resultant rapid growth in unit shipments, particularly to the home. Where once PCs were to be found only in the homes of the wealthy and educated, now they are priced within reach of most people. In fact, the norm for higher-income households is to own multiple personal computers. One issue contributing to the growth of sub-$1,000 PCs has been newer generations of faster Intel processors. But these chips have now gotten so fast that they are producing diminishing returns in overall system performance. The reason is that systems are now constrained by the performance of other components, notably buses and memory. But two technologies that will become available during the next year will help to eliminate those bottlenecks, permitting significantly faster machines to be produced. The first of these is the Intel BX chip set that will increase motherboard clock speeds by 50 percent, to 100 MHz. This will create a new generation of faster PCs but will also generate a significant challenge to PC board and module manufacturers. The higher speeds will create critical timing and crosstalk problems on the boards and modules themselves that previously were not of concern to designers. For that reason, the selection of motherboard and module manufacturers will become critical in producing a quality PC. Many smaller manufacturers, lacking the design and test resources to remain competitive, may go out of business. The other significant advance due early next year is Direct Rambus, a major new memory technology that promises to break the memory speed bottleneck. By implementing a new memory bus, Direct Rambus will provide a quantum leap in memory performance, thus unplugging the bottleneck for at least several years. Once again, higher speeds mean module design and test become more critical. Depending on how aggressive initial pricing will be for these two advances, demand will certainly be stimulated initially for high-end systems and, eventually, for sub-$1,000 PCs, as the technologies migrate downward. In any case, they can only stimulate, not curtail, the low-end market. All of these factors point to a vigorous market for PCs, including an expanding home market enabled by sub-$1,000 systems. There is one potential fly in the ointment, however: the economy, particularly the Asian economy.Several key components, most notably memory, are manufactured primarily in Asia by companies with headquarters there. With the recent precipitous decline in the region's economies, exacerbated by three years of slim or nonexistent margins on their products, these companies have been forced to drastically cut investment in new plant and equipment. This year, Japanese high-tech companies are expected to cut their investments in new plant and equipment by 20 percent to 30 percent. Without such investments, these suppliers will not have the necessary plant capacity online in time to meet the rapidly growing unit demand for new PCs. In the fourth quarter, we can expect shortages of 100-MHz SDRAM chips as memory manufacturers attempt to ramp up produc-tion of memory compliant with the new Intel BX chip set. If demand continues strong through next year, we can expect that DRAMs in general will be in short supply, leading to a likelihood of product allocation by midyear. By that time, unit demand is expected to exceed total worldwide supply, based upon current plus expected plant capacity.