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Technology Stocks : Newbridge Networks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Doug who wrote (11210)	5/6/1999 12:34:00 PM
From: Thomas Scharf	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18016

Doug, I design digital circuits for a living. I deal with parts selection every day. It is impossible to design a product as large and complex as an ATM backbone switch or a router using 100% multi-sourced parts. The trend in this direction is accelerating due to shorter product life cycles and increased complexity of the parts. The greater risk is that of obsolescence. For the last 10 years IC manufacturers have been ruthlessly cutting out products (and whole product lines) that are less highly profitable. They find it more expedient to deal with PO'd customers than to build more FAB capacity. Look at today's news. National is shutting down it's Cyrix microprocessor line. Companies using this chip will have to re-design their systems to use AMD or Intel parts (function is essentially the same, but form factors and even system timing requirements are different). Several times in my career I have had to go back to the drawing board and re-design a product that was almost ready for release because a key supplier had quit manufacturing a part I was using. The only time I ever ran into a simple shortage of parts, it was back in the 80's when there was a DRAM shortage. DRAMs had a gazillion sources back then but we had shortages that affected production. Go figure.