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Technology Stocks : CYRIX / NSM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (31253)	3/12/1999 11:41:00 AM
From: Scumbria	Respond to of 33344

Jim, Why doesn't .18u scale as good for NSM? MII has always run at a lower clock speed than K-6 or PII, even when manufactured by IBM. The M1/MII core was designed to maximize instructions per clock, which tends to come at the expense of MHz. Pravin's summary mentioned a badly designed via (metal interconnect) which apparently had a major impact on clock speed. Maybe there is more such low hanging fruit? Scumbria

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (31253)	3/12/1999 11:51:00 AM
From: kash johal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 33344

Jim, Re: "The PR400 will be on .18? That's it? PR400? AMD is at 450 on .25 and Intel at 500. Why doesn't .18u scale as good for NSM? On .18 AMD and Intel will be well over 600MHz. If all NSM can get out of .18 is PR400 then how in the world can they compete with AMD and Intel? All I can say is that the PCOAC had better be good because they certainly need to avoid Intel and AMD. How fast will the GX run on .18u, BTW..." NSM's 0.18 micron process is more like AMD/Intels current 0.22 process. NSM's MII is basically a dead product unless AMD has yield problems again. They have a new 370 pin Cayenne core chip coming soon with 256K cache on chip. If they can do 400Mhz on that they could cause AMD k6-2/Celeron family a lot of damage. I guess the GXm should run at 300Mhz in 0.18 micron - NSM's 0.18 micron anyway. However they big key is the power consumption. If they run these at 1.5V they should still run at 200Mhz and be very low power. Ideal for set top boxes and web browsers of course. Regards, Kash Johal

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (31253)	3/12/1999 12:03:00 PM
From: Pravin Kamdar	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 33344

Jim, CMOS 9 (0.18u) chips at NSM will just be rolling off the lines at the end of their Q4 (May). I think they are being cautious with their clock projections, since it is a new process and they may encounter some unexpected problems (a la AMD). If they can hit PR380 using 0.25u, one would have to assume that PR400 using 0.18u is just the beginning. Also, I don't think they are trying to break any speed records with the GX. They stated in the CC that low power was the key differentiator that was winning them GX business. I would think that a 300 Mhz 0.18u GXm would be a good balance between power and thin client performance. Pravin. Yes, I still own many NSM shares.