_______________________________________________
- THE FRIDAY LETTER -
(emailed weekly,
from Gilder Publishing,
for friends and subscribers)
_______________________________________________
| http://www.gilder.com/ | Issue 336.0/April 11,
2008
SIGN-UP A FRIEND FOR FREE!
HEADLINES:
- The Week / George Gilder: Telecosm ‘08 Preview
- Friday Feature / Steve Forbes: Why Stocks Stink
- Friday
Blogger Bonus / MEMS
Markets Could Explode
- Readings /
|
GILDER/FORBES
TELECOSM 2008: The exaflood Join the greatest minds and movers, executives and
entrepreneurs in identifying the critical path technologies and policies
vital to the rejuvenation of the economy, including legendary investor and visionary Joe McNay. TELECOSM
2008 will kick off the evening of Tuesday May 27 with a networking dinner
cruise aboard The Adirondac cruise ship, offering attendees the
valuable opportunity to network with world-leading
technology executives, entrepreneurs and scientists, and market-moving
economists, advisors and investors.
|
The Week / Gilder/Forbes Telecosm ‘08 Conference Preview
George Gilder on Gilder/Forbes Telecosm 2008 (coming May 27 – 29): My Telecosm 2008 preview post leads off with EZchip
(EZCH), which is a Telecosm 2008 sponsor and spearhead stock. The hollowing of
the router continues, while Cisco (CSCO) moves into the blade computer
and datacenter virtualization business. At Telecosm 2007, you heard from Larry
Boucher of Alacritech (back this year also) that Cisco would become the
leading computer company because of its position as the backplane of the data
center. Watch this phenomenon unfold. And watch Alacritech prosper in the
datacenter with its 10-Gig TCP offload ASIC (application specific integrated
circuit).
A new Internet-2 star will rise at Telecosm 2008! Ron Jankov of NetLogic (NETL)
has targeted the central fiberspeed challenge of the hollowed router: How to do
the increasingly complex address lookups and virus scans in an ever-compressed
timespan of nanoseconds. You can't do it with DRAMs despite my contrary hopes
in earlier years. Jankov had it right.
Cavium (CAVM) CEO Syed Ali irritated me a couple years back by
persistently predicting that Cavium would usurp EZchip and other network
processors. I thought it an overreach and have not endorsed the company. Then
Atiq Raza of RMI (Cavium's private rival) also made this claim. One of
Silicon Valley's most valuable technical leaders, resuscitator of AMD, master
of the multicore and multithreaded architectures that are prevailing in the
industry, Atiq tragically got blown away by an inside trading scandal. RMI is
stumbling and now Ali of CAVM is king of the high-end network processors, with
his DEC Alpha processor team from Hudson, MA. They offer multicore prowess,
encrypt-decrypt, virus scans, regex, hashes, and advanced services for virtual
private networks, entailing extensive processing and TCP termination, which
means disassembling the packets and reassembling them for transmission. It is a
different function from superfast packet processing but it is vital, and CAVM
is the leader.
Semitool (SMTL) is the spearhead for the next generation of
semiconductor capital equipment tools managing the move to copper interconnects
that entail changing 17% of wafer fab process steps. It is just a matter of
time and industry revival before SMTL harvests the fruits of its visionary
leadership. The other even more unknown leader for the new process node is SemEquip,
still private in Bellerica, MA, with a revolutionary technology for ion
implantation that increases throughput 9X and reduces leakage current up to
100X (most recent NEC estimates), while increasing transistor switching speeds
40 percent. I am on their case.
Andrew Odlyzko of the University of Minnesota will be at Telecosm’08 to discuss
the upsurge of Internet traffic. He is a strong skeptic of Trusted Platform
Modules, so perhaps he will come up with some devastating response to Steven
Sprague's case that this is the year for Wave Systems (WAVX), with TPMs
in literally hundreds of millions of computers and Wave's software needed to
make them work, with some competition only from Infineon (IFX), which
does not cover all the different TPM modules.
The “teleputer” paradigm continues its ascent and Synaptics (SYNA), the
Carver Mead-Federico Faggin founded company that makes touchpads and other IO
for teleputers remains critical to future generations. I own shares of this
company and Foveon, which spun out of it. But for a supplier of the
missing elements that complete a teleputer system, SYNA is hard to beat.
Nvidia (NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), both of which fit
the graphics processor paradigm, will be heavily explored at Telecosm, with OTOY
creator Jules Urbach in the lead and Nvidia chief scientist David Kirk
delivering a keynote address.
Register for Telecosm 2008: www.TelecosmConference.com
To read more of George Gilder’s posts and those of the Gilder
Telecosm Forum members, visit http://www.gildertech.com/ and become a
Forum member today.
|
FRIDAY LETTER BOOK OF THE MONTH |
Friday Feature / Why Stocks Stink
STEVE FORBES, www.Forbes.com (04/11/08): Why have U.S. stock
markets been such relatively poor performers this decade? American equities
have lagged their brethren in the rest of the world since they reached their
lows in October 2002. At the height of the stock market last October--before it
was clobbered by the credit crisis--the S&P was up about 100% from its lows
of five years before. In contrast, German equities have risen more than 200%,
the French about 120%. The MSCI World Index, which includes the U.S., has moved
up about 135%. It's no surprise that the MSCI Emerging Markets Index has
skyrocketed almost 400%.
It isn't as if
the U.S. economy has been laggard. Between 2002 and 2007 the U.S. economy's
growth exceeded the entire size of the Chinese economy. In effect, we grew the
size of China in five years. China's growth rates are higher, but that's
because it's coming off of a much, much smaller base.
The villain
behind our less than lustrous performance is the ever weakening dollar. The
Bush Administration and the Federal Reserve believe a weak greenback means
greater exports, fewer imports and thus a smaller trade deficit. In the short
term they're right. But they willfully ignore the disastrous price to our
domestic economy that trashing the dollar exacts. The excess money created by
the Fed led to the housing disaster and the return of inflation. Cheap money
also hurts business investment in this country, one reason that companies have
tended to beef up their capital outlays in their overseas subsidiaries and are
clutching cash here at home. Rarely this late in an economic expansion has cash
made up such a large portion of corporate balance sheets as it does today.
The White House
and the Fed should be less bullheaded about their misbegotten dollar policy and
openly vow to take whatever steps necessary to buck up the buck….
Continue Reading:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0421/021.html
HEAR
STEVE FORBES SPEAK AT TELECOSM 2008.
Register today: www.TelecosmConference.com.
|
The Gilder Telecosm Forum To learn how to join this powerful network of
talented, tech-savvy investors and thinkers online daily to debate, discuss,
and decode new and emerging technologies and share valuable and actionable
investment advice, visit www.Gildertech.com
today. |
Friday Blogger Bonus / MEMS
Markets Could Explode
R. Colin Johnson, EETimes.com: Microelectromechanical system (MEMS) oscillators are
replacing quartz crystals at a 120 percent annual growth rate, according to an
industry forecast, or four times the growth rate forecast elsewhere.
The bullish MEMS forecast
from Wicht Technologie Consulting (WTC, Munich, Germany), outpaced an earlier
survey of MEMS foundries by Yole Development (Lyon, France), which predicted 30
percent annual growth.
According to WTC, the current
$2.5 million market for MEMS oscillators will grow to $140 million by 2012,
fueled by microminiaturization in consumer and automotive electronics as well
as by system-on-chip MEMS with multiple oscillators on a single CMOS chip.
Beyond 2012, MEMS oscillators could also begin penetrating the $1 billion
market for mobile handset timing chips, according to WTC.
Already shipped are about 3
million MEMS oscillators in 2007 from Discera Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) and
SiTime Corp. (Sunnyvale, Calif.). Silicon Clocks Inc. (Fremont, Calif.) is
readying its first shipments of silicon-germanium based MEMS oscillators, which
the company plans to offer as SoC timing circuits.
The first products from Discera and SiTime can be described as system-in-package,"
said Jeremie Bouchaud, head of market research at WTC. "However, Silicon
Clocks has positioned itself in SoC MEMS timing solutions from the start. Its
first commercial samples should be available within a year, with SiTime to follow."
WTC also predicts that three
large chip makers will soon announce their entry into the MEMS timing chip
market. NXP Semiconductors (Eindhoven, Netherlands) and STMicroelectronics
(Geneva, Switzerland) will be the first. Another as-yet unnamed company is expected
to emerge in 2009. Among the candidates are Motorola, which has MEMS
pico-projector under development, Freescale and Texas Instruments. A handful of
Japanese chip makers are also eyeing the MEMS market.
CMOS timing chips with no
moving parts--both quartz crystals and MEMS resonators have moving parts--have
also been announced by Mobius Microsystems Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.). In early
April, Mobius unveiled a CMOS harmonic oscillator that eliminates other timing
chips in favor of an inductive-capacitive oscillator on CMOS that uses no
mechanical resonators….
Read On:
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207100311
__________________________________________
Readings /
IBM's Faster, Denser Memory
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20553/?a=f
Sizing Up a Post-Yahoo Ad Landscape
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120787375527206619.html?mod=technology_main_whats_news
STMicro Joins NXP In Wireless Chips
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120784438625605153.html?mod=technology_main_whats_news
Intel Capital boosts Chinese venture fund
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207100258
Analysis: AMD's numbers don't
look good
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207100361
The 3-G iPhone: What To Expect
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/04/what-should-we.html
Targeted Delivery for Nanoparticles
http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/20547/
__________________________________________
Friday Letter Editor: Mary Collins George / mcollins@gilder.com
ADVERTISING INFORMATION
The Friday Letter is mailed each week to more than 40,000-plus
subscribers and friends of Gilder Publishing, including industry leaders,
financial professionals and individual investors. For information about
advertising, contact Lauren Klopacs at lklopacs@forbes.com.
PLEASE NOTE: The appearance of an advertisement in the Friday Letter
does not indicate an endorsement for the product and/or service by George
Gilder, Gilder Publishing LLC, or the Friday Letter staff.
FEEDBACK AND PROBLEMS
For technical problems, or to send letters to the editor, please
e-mail info@gilder.com.
MAILING ADDRESS
Gilder Publishing, LLC
ATTN: Friday Letter
291A Main Street
Great Barrington, MA 01230
_______________________________________________
The Friday Letter is published weekly for subscribers and
friends of Gilder Publishing. If someone you know would enjoy it, please feel
free to forward a copy.
Gilder Publishing makes the Friday Letter available for free. To
help defray some of the costs of producing this information on a weekly basis,
we will from time to time be sending you offers from companies we think you'll
be interested in. These offers will not come more than once a week. If you do
not wish to receive this related information, please opt out of this process at
the link below and we will not share your name with companies outside of Gilder
Publishing.
To SUBSCRIBE please visit http://www.gilder.com/
To UNSUBSCRIBE please go to http://www.gilder.com/fridayletter/unsubscribe.php
Trouble subscribing or unsubscribing?
Email info@gilder.com
http://www.gilder.com/unsubscribe/specialproducts.php
To SUBSCRIBE please visit http://www.gilder.com/
To UNSUBSCRIBE please go to http://www.gilder.com/fridayletter/unsubscribe.php
Trouble subscribing or unsubscribing?
Email info@gilder.com
_______________________________________________
Copyright 2008 Gilder Publishing LLC