_______________________________________________
- THE FRIDAY LETTER -
(emailed weekly,
from Gilder Publishing,
for friends and subscribers)
_______________________________________________
| http://www.gilder.com/ | Issue 290.0/April 13,
2007
SIGN-UP A FRIEND FOR FREE!
HEADLINES:
- The Week / Power-One: A Raving Buy?
- Friday Feature / 3-D Chips
- Friday Blogger Bonus / Rutledge: Asian Energy
Security
- Readings /
SPECIAL
OFFER
Exploit the Uranium Conspiracy
After hiding its activities from UN inspectors, Iran has
now confessed to a major expansion of its uranium enrichment
capacity. Experts believe this takes Iran a step closer to building a nuclear
weapon. While this is very bad news for the civilized world, it's very
good news for the company with a virtual monopoly on a critical uranium
enrichment technology. Learn here how you can Profit from this Tiny
$5 Stock. |
The
Week /
Power-One: A Raving Buy?
Gilder Telecosm Forum member 1: From
Power-One’s (PWER) last earnings report:
- Profitability forecasted for Q107 with net revenue of $125 to $135
million
- Revenue guidance for fiscal 2007 reaffirmed at $530 million to $550
million
- Z-One(R) Digital Power Management patent infringement Markman hearing
concludes; design wins increase to approximately 80
- Current market cap... $471 million.
PWER's most recent slides, dated March, 2007:
http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/73/73416/presentations/2007_March.ppt
George Gilder: Does anyone know why this company
is not now a raving buy? I am going to expand my holdings unless someone can
tell me what is going on that accounts for the slump.
Gilder Telecosm Forum member 2: George, My guess is someone could be speculating that there is an
options problem here a la SIGM, though the current (last reported) short
position is only about 8% of the float. This is one tech company, which has had
nothing to say on the issue thus far (as far as I know). IRF revealed some
accounting problems just yesterday and their stock dropped about 8% (I see it
is back up a bit today). I've been buying PWER myself as I see limited downside
from here and a lot of potential on the upside. The market is giving the stock
ZERO credit for Z-One and, it seems, the potential for the company to dominate
digital power.
Gilder Telecosm Forum member 1: PWER has
80 Z-One design wins, which encompass 400 slots on various circuit boards. So
far, Z-One revenues have been insignificant. I believe this will begin to
change by year-end. One over hang lately… the Artesyn lawsuit. This should be
resolved in a few months in PWER's favor. PWER could end up with a corner on
the market in digital power architecture for circuit boards.
Gilder Telecosm Forum member 3: Frankly, I
just can’t see anything in the Z-One approach that is earth shattering or
anything other than a small-to-medium step in the slow migration toward digital
implementations of previously analog functions – a migration which has preceded
for about three decades.
Their approach, while okay, doesn’t seem to me to confer profound
advantages over what exists now or could exist if someone like Texas
Instruments or Analog Devices really thought that chips of this type had some
major market potential. TI and Analog Devices and MicroChip and Free Scale all
know how to make a voltage regulator and a serial bus, and have been making
digital signal processor and microcontroller chips for decades. I’m guessing
they didn't put 'em together in a digital power regulator (as did Power One)
not because they didn't know how, but because of a perceived limited market.
GTF Analyst Charlie Burger: The
disappointing 4Q, as mentioned in the Stephens report, is just what I was
expecting and one reason why I was especially negative after the acquisition.
Now it has happened, so we move on. Yes, there may be one more disappointing
quarter (or maybe not), but looking ahead this stock can only go up long-term
at this absurd price. My biggest concern short-term, if you read my lastest
analysis on the company section of the GTR page, is that the lowered net income may require
Power to issue more shares or borrow. That would keep the stock down for a
while. But even at that, long-term with Z-One, this is still a good buy.
To read more posts by George Gilder and the GTR subscribers log on
with your subscriber ID at http://www.gildertech.com/board/.
SPECIAL OFFER
|
The Gilder
Telecosm Forum Register
today using your GTR password to gain entry into the web’s premier
technology investment community.
|
Friday Feature / 3-D Chips
Nick Tredennick, Gilder Technology Report (04/11/07):
Samsung is experimenting with wafer stacking. Since wafer
stacking shortens interconnects, Samsung finds that its wafer-stacked 16-Gb
flash memory is about 30 percent faster. Samsung expects to ship wafer-stacked
chips in NAND–based memory modules early this year. Samsung has said that it
will also do system-in-package chips and high-capacity DRAM. Samsung isn’t
alone. A partnership among NEC Electronics (NIPNY), Elpida Memory,
and Oki Electric has announced stacked flash chips. Micron (MU)
is doing wafer-level packaging that uses TSVs. Freescale is working on TSV
interconnection. IBM (IBM) is developing 3-D chips with a virtually
unlimited number of interconnections between its layers.
Tezzaron
Semiconductor
is a fabless semiconductor company with several wafer-stacked products. It has
3-D stacked SRAM, 3-D stacked DRAM, and 3-D stacked SRAM with an 8051
microcontroller. Tezzaron, which was featured in my article of five years ago
(back then it was Tachyon Semiconductor), has been a pioneer in the development
of wafer stacking. Bob Patti, Tezzaron’s CTO then and now, knows why wafer
stacking has taken a long time to develop. It isn’t because it is particularly
difficult technically; it has more to do with specialization of job functions.
As
John Trezza of the pioneering Cubic Wafer of Austin (formerly Xanoptix)
discovered, (see Gilder Technology Report, January 2006) design
engineers and manufacturing engineers live in separate worlds. When Tezzaron
and Glenn Leedy’s Elm Technology, a holder of fundamental patents in
wafer stacking, went to large semiconductor companies to talk about wafer
stacking, they typically got shuttled to the manufacturing (process) engineers.
Wafer stacking does look like it belongs to the process engineers. But wafer
stacking requires participation by the design engineers, who not only weren’t
meeting with Tezzaron and Elm, but had no incentive to deviate from techniques
that were working perfectly well for them (shrinking transistors). The
processor-memory bottleneck, shrinking system sizes, and the search for lower
power consumption are finally changing designer incentives. Even when the
designers are on board with wafer stacking, there’ll be a delay as the
electronic design automation (EDA) software companies revise their products to
support the design for stacked wafers.
Equipment
vendors Alcatel (ALA), EV Group, XSiL, and our favorite Semitool
(SMTL) formed the EMC-3D consortium with the goal of lowering the cost of the
3-D process below $200 per wafer. I discussed wafer stacking five years ago
(“Life After Moore’s Law,” Dynamic Silicon, Jan 2002). That was early;
if the equipment makers are thinking about it, it’s probably about to take off.
Because
they are flat, today’s chips aren’t efficient. Imagine the area inefficiency if
Hong Kong or New York were to abandon skyscrapers. It’s easy enough to do:
that’s Los Angeles. Today’s chips are Los Angeles….
___________________
RELATED READING: IBM Touts Breakthrough in 3-D Chips (WSJ,
04/12/07)
IBM
Corp. said it achieved a breakthrough in developing a three-dimensional
semiconductor chip that can be stacked on top of another electronic device in a
vertical configuration long sought by engineers to reduce size and power use.
IBM's
new method, which uses current semiconductor manufacturing technology, involves
creating tiny holes called "through-silicon-vias" that are etched all
the way through a chip and then injected with tungsten to create wires.
"This allows us to move 3-D chips from the lab," said Lisa Su, vice
president, semiconductor research and development center.
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB117633745391667111-lMyQjAxMDE3NzE2MjMxMzI3Wj.html
SPECIAL OFFER
|
Gilder/Forbes Telecosm 2007 |
Friday Blogger Bonus / Rutledge: Asian Energy
Security
John Rutledge (04/10/07): I've written a piece on
Asian Energy Security for the Chinese Academy of Sciences that will be
published later this spring. You can see the abstract below.
ABSTRACT: Strong growth and rising
energy needs are increasing Asia’s reliance on energy supplies from the
troubled Middle East, making energy security an urgent issue. Existing policies,
based on orthodox demand-based economics and an overly narrow concept of energy
are unlikely to solve the problem.
This paper presents a new framework for thinking about energy and economic
growth based on the broad concept of energy used in the natural sciences. This
framework views economic activity as transfers of both current solar energy and
vintage solar energy, stored in the form of natural resources, human capital,
physical capital, and technology, driven by the uncompromising laws of thermodynamics.
It points toward unconventional solutions to the energy security problem
including investing in communication networks, information technology, and
education; agricultural research to increase the efficiency plant energy
capture and improve the productivity of farm workers and, thereby, release
manpower for the energy-efficient services sector; and legal, regulatory, and
exchange rate policies to provide a stable environment to attract high tech
capital from global investors.
Check out John’s blog:
http://www.rutledgeblog.com/
____________________________________
Readings /
The Weekly
GTI
http://www.gtindex.com/
George Gilder to Speak at Freedomfest
http://www.freedomfest.com/speakers.htm
India cell phone subscribers to
triple
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=DPWRS2HTVPFJ4QSNDLSCKHA?articleID=199000381
Fairlight Uses Altera FPGAs in Crystal Core Media Processing Engine
http://www.itnewsonline.com/showstory.php?storyid=9275&scatid=3&contid=3
Sony studies commercial PlayStation 3 supercomputing
grid
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199000315
Kessler: Sloshing
http://www.andykessler.com/
My Friend, Milton
Friedman
http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2007-04-11cb.html
__________________________________________
SIGN-UP A FRIEND FOR FREE!
Click here to
add a friend to our Friday Letter mailing list.
__________________________________________
FRIDAY LETTER STAFF
Editor: Mary Collins / mcollins@gilder.com
Research: Sandy Fleischmann / sfleischmann@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 Linda Bentley at lbentley@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 2007 Gilder Publishing LLC