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To: getgo234 who wrote (15903)	11/3/1998 11:19:00 PM
From: Tony Viola	Respond to of 25814

Getgo, >>>There is a posting this evening on the xlnx thread which notes that equipment manufacturers (telecommunications) are moving away from customized ASIC's and moving towards commodity chips.<<< I said something very much like that in this post (last paragraph): exchange2000.com Of course it would not be good for LSI if it were to start happening on a large scale. I personally have no idea of the possibilities of that, or how long it might be before the momentum of SOCs would start to slow. However, I'm sure companies that use ASICs will look at other alternatives for new designs on a case by case basis, especially since embedded MPUs or microcontrollers are so cheap and easy to use now. Tony

To: getgo234 who wrote (15903)	11/4/1998 2:37:00 PM
From: patrick tang	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25814

Getgo, my view of this and also in general: The whole business world is like a pyramid. For those at the top that hungers for the best, cost no objective, ASIC is fine. But this pyramid grows up. Today's specialized ASIC chips are tomorrow's commodities as they migrate down in technology towards the middle of the pyramid. At end of like, they become the jelly beans. But for those at the top, there will always be business for the specialized high prized stuff. LSI seems to be very able to remain growing in technology to stay at the top. However, as part of the nature of being the top (monopolies like uSoft no counted), the total market can be limited. I would like LSI to be able to be a mass manufacturer so as the migration occurs, they can still retain the commodity market by making more of the same chip at much higher volumes but lower margins. In another words, their total sales would grow much faster if their manufacturing is efficient enough to compete with the likes of TSMC in commodity parts. I don't really see any way out of it if they want to be a $5B company 3 years from now. And from the last cc, Corrigan seems to want to target the consumer market, especially in Asia. For that work, they will have to shift the company to also include an efficient manufacturing model besides simply IP. So I am hoping that Corrigan is already actively doing just that. patrick PS, a manufacturing model can also mean profit during good times - TSMC was making 50%+ margins at the last round.