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

To: MileHigh who wrote (23961)	9/9/1998 12:41:00 AM
From: Big Bucks	Respond to of 70976

MH, I kind of view it like pruning a tree, sometimes it is necessary to cut away some overgrowth for the rest of the tree to flourish and bear healthy fruit. Next generation DRAM chips will be 256M to 1 Gig, operating in excess of 125-150mhz, and will require extreme precision in process manufacturing. Only the biggest and best funded manufacturers will be able to compete, and the cost of production will require a huge initial investment for fab and equipment and engineering expertise. I guess a bigger question is just how much memory do we really need for home and business use? At some point there is a point of diminishing returns on investment vs necessity. At some point only a few very large manufacturers will be able to supply the world-wide need for memory due to economics of scale and 300mm wafer production output. Also, keep in mind, that the newer system-on-a-chip designs are starting to fabricate DRAM directly into the chip architecture and will likely eliminate the need for discrete supporting memory and miscellaneous support chips except for specialty applications in 3-4 years, IMO. As 1 market goes away several more will likely take its' place, progress marches on. Just my opinion, BB