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Technology Stocks : Semtech (Nasdaq:SMTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Morrison who wrote (732)	12/11/1998 1:57:00 AM
From: Jeff Bond	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1225

Shoot, I don't know, I just know how to spell it :o) In reality, being an engineer and having worked in high reliability manufacturing, I understand well conceptually most of the technology. However, I don't pretend to know the inticate details of these processes, which I sometimes refer to as black magic. What these people do, and the advancemetns they have made is AMAZING. That's why I am so upbeat on SMTC, because I can understand exactly how difficult the problems they are solving really are. Here is some stuff on Gallium Arsenide, which in essence is a replacement for silicon in the manufacturing of semiconductors. It is capable of being used to produce much faster processors, but it is an expensive process at this point in time. It is typically used in special applications that require the added processing power operate properly. A classic example is on Automated Test Equipment (ATE), to be able to test anything, there has to be devices processing the information that is received by the ATE from whatever being tested. To properly test a device, it should be evaluated at full steam. Therefore, the ATE must be able to operate at a speed faster than that in order to process all the data as well as deal with overhead. SMTC currently uses bi-polar CMOS to accomplish this in their ATE devices developed through Edge Semiconductor. In essence, bi-polar CMOS components "surround" the device being tested, in order to allow it to be evaluated at full speed. I'm now guessing, but one application might be the use of gallium aresenide in ATE equipment, to allow much faster CPU's and other components (memory, etc.) to be tested in the future. Another might be in the laser and fiber markets, where the media is no longer the slow part of the equation. We'll see what happens, but knowing that SMTC is involved in gallium arsenide (and maybe silcon germanium) tells me they know the industry is going to continue to need faster and faster solutions to analog problems. Can you say LEADER ... :o) Here are some link, I hope they are helpful to anyone interested in this topic. liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov roskill.co.uk quadrant.iet.unipi.it korrnet.org dqindia.com It's always the same story - lighter, faster, and cheaper. In the case of GaAs, it is lighter because you can build a system comparable to one made with silicon with less material, it is definitely faster ... but so far, it is DEFINITELY not cheaper. That's the hangup with GaAs as far as I can tell, it just costs too much to justify at this point in time. Remember when they used to say that about silicon though? Regards, JB