mark@mips.COM (Mark G. Johnson) (03/19/88)
An article <1988Mar17.195328.12277@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu> (wow!) by lharris@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu (Leonard Harris) says: > I believe the only US DRAM manufactures of note are Motorola > and Micron Tech. Neither can meet demand. Actually the US producers who_sell_externally (i.e. excluding IBM) are AT&T, Texas Instruments, and Micron Technology. Motorola imports wafers from Toshiba, tests the dice, packages the good 'uns, and sells them under the Motorola label. Similarly, Intel has an agreement to do the same thing with Samsung dRAMS (from South Korea). T.I. has two dRAM fabs, one in Miho, Japan and one in Richardson, Texas. T.I. builds their own designs, which originate in Houston. > Fight back!! There is no reason 256K x 1 rams should cost <$3.00 > There isn't even an american company that makes 1 Megabit DRAMS > (don't ask what they cost). Well, not completely correct. All three US companies, AT&T, TI, and Micron, have designed and built working 1Megabit dRAMS. It's just that these companies aren't building them in high volume and selling them yet. Partly it's cuz the US parts were later than the Japanese producers', and partly it's cuz one can make mucho revenue building the (simpler) 256K device for which demand exceeds supply. Also, there are (were) a few more American companies who designed and built working 1Megabit dRAMS and then decided not to sell them --- the perceived cost of the submicron fabs was too high. Intel, Mostek, and Inmos {um, not really a US company now that I think about it}, all had working 1Megabits that they didn't take into production. AMD also had a 1Megabit program but I don't know whether they built working die. In any case, no "US DRAM conspiracy" exists, pitting evil American mfrs who deliberately restrict capacity, against helpless consumers who are forced to purchase huge volumes of chips at artificially high prices. The sad fact is that American companies don't have the stomach for the roller-coaster DRAM market, nor will their stockholders permit the huge investments necessary to participate in the DRAM crapshoot {I mean, um, DRAM market. Yeah.} -Mark Johnson *** DISCLAIMER: Any opinions above are personal. *** UUCP: {decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!decwrl!mips!mark TEL: 408-991-0208 US mail: MIPS Computer Systems, 930 E. Arques, Sunnyvale, CA 94086