Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Rambus (RMBS) - Eagle or Penguin -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: REH who wrote (12806)	1/11/1999 8:46:00 AM
From: REH	Respond to of 93625

The scoop on chips By James Connolly 01/04/99 You probably didn't start out 1998 thinking the year would end with $399 price tags teasing home PC buyers or $10,000 starting prices for four-processor servers. The wave of vendors driving faster systems into lower price ranges won't break in 1999, according to analysts — but there already are signs that PC pricing may be a little less crazy. "Pricing has already stabilized a bit in the last two or three months; the corporate market is likely to see smaller price decreases than the consumer does," says analyst George Iwanyc at Dataquest in San Jose, Calif. He says Dataquest expects the sweet spot for corporate PCs to stay in the $1,000 to $1,500 range. Two directions PC chip technology is driving in two directions. First, Intel Corp.'s Pentium II line soared to 450-MHz, and Intel plans to offer a 500-MHz, multimedia-oriented chip nicknamed Katmai in early 1999. Iwanyc expects a first-quarter push into the corporate market by rival chip vendors releasing their next-generation chips, such as Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s (AMD) 500-MHz K7 and Cyrix Corp.'s 600-MHz Jalapeno. Meanwhile, AMD and Cyrix should continue to have an impact in the consumer market, where Intel responded in 1998 with its Celeron line of value-priced processors. By the end of 1998, consumers were able to buy 300-MHz PCs for $399 after rebates. On the horizon A key PC development that CIOs should watch for in 1999 is support for the Rambus memory bus interface offered by Rambus Inc. and Intel. In early 1998, vendors released the first PCs to jump from a 66-MHz bus to 100 MHz. Now Rambus — with a raw bus speed of 400 MHz — represents another speed boost, although technical limits won't allow the full 4-to-1 gain, Iwanyc says. On the server side, Intel extended its Pentium II family with the Xeon line of processors, while bumping delivery of the 64-bit Merced architecture further into 2000. Yet few people are eagerly awaiting the 64-bit chip. "Merced hype is just that — hype," says Jon Oltsik, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. With corporate buyers living in three-year time frames for their server purchases, Unix servers will continue to handle heavy-duty corporate applications, he says. In 1999, Oltsik expects still more clock-speed boosts for Xeon; greater support for I2O input/output technology; and a move toward server hybrids, which will allow CIOs to partition multiprocessor servers to support multiple operating systems. But the speed boosts for Intel servers won't help if CIOs still must wrestle with the limitations of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT. "The chip is almost secondary. NT is limited in that you can't run more than one application on one box. So if you bring in one new NT application, you have to bring in a new box. You'll have people who managed five boxes last year managing 12 boxes this year and 20 a year from now," Oltsik says.

To: REH who wrote (12806)	1/11/1999 9:26:00 AM
From: blake_paterson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

ebnonline.com Semico issues allocation alert to buyers By Crista Souza Electronic Buyers' News (01/08/99, 04:35:50 PM EDT) Never thought we'd hear the word “allocation” so early in the new year. Semico Research is reporting prices on 64-Mbit SDRAMs are rising sharply, and microprocessors will be scarce in the first-quarter, as factories that produce the chips are quickly filling to capacity. According to the Phoenix, Ariz.-based market research firm, average selling prices for 64-Mbit SDRAMs had risen to nearly $10 by the end of the fourth quarter of 1998, up from $6 at the beginning of the quarter. “When we hear of that [happening] at the beginning of the year, it bodes well for having better ASPs for the rest of the year,” said Semico analyst Jim Feldhan. Semico has raised its 1999 DRAM forecast to a “conservative” 38% revenue growth. Over the course of the year, die shrinks will allow suppliers to produce more chips per wafer, and capacity will loosen somewhat. However, new packaging requirements that accompany the introduction of Rambus DRAM-which carry as much as a $5 adder per chip-will keep ASPs from declining, Feldhan said. In addition, OEMs in the networking equipment segment are suddenly paying a premium on older fast page mode and EDO DRAM parts, which manufacturers are phasing out of production. Meanwhile, AMD and Intel are reportedly selling as many microprocessors as they can produce, and some distributors said they were on allocation for certain desktop-targeted models last quarter. Despite other pundits' predictions that competition to supply the sub-$1,000 PC market will cause severe MPU price erosion, Semico sees capacity constraints keeping ASPs high, and resulting in an 18% to 19% growth in total MPU revenue for 1999.