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Technology Stocks : VLSI Technology - Waiting for good news from NASDAQ !!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maui Jim who wrote (4359)	9/14/1998 4:11:00 AM
From: Linda Kaplan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6565

Headline: VLSI Plans To Unveil New Technology To Speed Work On Chip Design ====================================================================== >From The Wall Street Journal SAN JOSE, Calif. -- VLSI Technology Inc. plans to disclose Monday a new prototyping technology that, the company says, can slash 50% off the time it takes to design custom semiconductor chips. The chip maker said that its new VLSI Velocity technology changes the design process so that hardware and software engineers can work simultaneously, rather than in a laborious interactive process in which hardware designers fabricate a chip, then software programmers test it to see whether their software runs correctly. "Our key to success is reducing time to market," said Al Stein, chairman and chief executive officer of VLSI. "This is a major step in achieving that." As chips become more complex, the old methods aren't working. Simulating the chip in software has become painfully slow. And some hardware-testing machines can run as much as $1 million per chip. The result: Cost overruns and schedule delays. Robert Payne, vice president, strategic technology, said that designing custom chips has become so complex most chip designers can use only about 10% of the capabilities of the newest chips. VLSI will charge $19,000 for its VLSI Velocity solution; the catch is that the chip designer must use VLSI's factory to produce its chips. As such, the company hopes it will attract new custom-chip customers to help lift it out of the world-wide semiconductor slump. VLSI said it has one initial customer but declined to give identification. Copyright (c) 1998 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.