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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: William Nelson who wrote (19855)	6/3/1998 12:38:00 AM
From: Carl R.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Of course you realize that memory chips have routinely jumped by factors of 4 every three years or so. The earliest chips I have personally seen were in a computer called the "Monrobot". The Monrobot was produced in a variety of models from 1955 to 1960, and I really don't know which one I was looking at, and I can assure you it was no longer in use. <G> Anyway, the desk sized unit I saw used 32 bit chips for its main memory. One of the oldest rules of programming is that programs will expand to fill all available memory. I expect this to continue to be true as our programs continue to become more visual. Pictures take a lot of memory. Carl

To: William Nelson who wrote (19855)	6/3/1998 1:40:00 PM
From: Nevin S.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

I don't think 256 Mb chips will be in production for some time. According to Carl Johnson, they will have to be made on 300 mm wafers and no DRAM mfg's have stepped up to the plate with that kind of investment. techweb.com Let's take the dynamic RAM business, for example. Investors are grabbing on to the recent announcements regarding 256-Mbyte DRAM production as if it is the product that will pull the sector out of its malaise. Fat chance! Almost every memory manufacturer knows 256-Mbyte DRAMs can only be profitably made on 300-mm wafers. Simply put, there are not enough candidates on a 200-mm die to justify the production of 256-Mbyte DRAM in mass quantity on this wafer size. We're stuck here, folks -- either move to 300 mm and 0.18 micron to produce these chips or leave the No-Limit Poker table. This is easier said than done.