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Technology Stocks : 3DFX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Patrick Grinsell who wrote (12650)	5/17/1999 6:39:00 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

>> /patienceoff... >> /patienceon Please refrain from using TeX formatting codes. I suffered enough with them in the 80s and your action brings about painful memories. Please stick to standard HTML format: <impatience>...</impatience> <G> ST

To: Patrick Grinsell who wrote (12650)	5/17/1999 10:22:00 PM
From: JAG	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16960

Well, Patrick I know you will not believe this by profession is that of an analyst dealing in financial numbers. I have been busy researching the entire graphics industry over the past 12 months. Here is what I think is going to happen long term. Diamond and NVDA will merge. Diamond will spin its graphics division into NVDA. Why? 1. Diamond and CREAF are the only two significant players in graphics cards. Although CREAF is larger and financially sounder than Dimd, CREAF is primarily focused on audio. The man who runs CREAF is very strong willed and the man who runs NVDA is a very dynamic personality. Unless one of the two takes a back seat (unlikely), a merger or buyout will not happen. In addtion, Dimond is the card player who now has the OEMS tied up with the TNT2 and this is most important to NVDA. Ideally, a good solution would be for a merger of CREAF, NVDA, and DIMD. CREAF could run audio and DIMD communications and graphics. 2. S3 has announced significant design wins. I suspect this is at the expense of ATI and Matrox. S3 will not be successful at retail but will be tough for TDFX at the OEM level. Another real strength of S3 that no one should discount is that they have their own fabs (or interests in fabs) with migration to .18 fab technolgy. If you have keep up with the most recent news in Taiwan you will recognize the TSMC and UMC fab capacity utilization rates are way up. In addtion, many larger companies, are outsourcing more production to these fabs. There is some concern among fabless companines that they will not be able to obtain production. It is funny how the world can change in 12 months. But when is the last time you can remember announcements about new fab construction plans. Several years ago, we had an announcement every day. As Japan and Asia continues to recover this fab shortage will become a bigger problem. I suspect right now that NVDA and TDFX are fighting with TSMC because the chips are from the same TSMC plant.

To: Patrick Grinsell who wrote (12650)	5/18/1999 1:05:00 PM
From: John Farrell	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16960

Dear Patrick, Micronics never has had any relation to Micron Electronics. Yes, the names sound similar, but there was never any business ties. Diamond bought Micronics about a year and half ago to get into the motherboard business as slipping graphics onto the motherboard has often been considered as a logical step. Diamond has long been the graphics supplier at Micron Electronics before and after purchasing Micronics, weather it was an SIII part, a Rendition part, a 3Dfx part, an Intel part, or an Nvidia part... Diamond is their board vendor of choice. It would be a major upset if Micron went with someone other than Diamond, but not due to any cross-ownership. STB Systems provided many boards for Dell (various SIII and NVDA parts) and has had good ties at DELL, so missing being even being "optional" business at DELL with a V3 should be a concern. Of course, the key is to winning business on new machine launches as DELL, GTW, CPQ, IBM, etc. rarely ever change the graphics until new machines come out. Getting OEMs for the next launch of Intel CPUs will be the key for TDFX... be that with Rampage or V4 or whatever they call the next chip. -John