ResearchNewsletter - Archive Server

"World Economic Overview"
Joseph W. Duncan, Corporate Economist and Chief Statistician
Dun & Bradstreet Corporation
The U.S. trade deficit has been the world's engine of growth, but President George
Bush's economic policy will have to tread a careful path between Draconian deficit
reduction, which could lead to recession, and reduction measures that are too lax, which
could lead to higher inflation. Mr. Duncan believes that President Bush can find the
right balance and predicts high growth for the U.S. economy in the first half of 1989 and
slow growth in the second half.
However, five factors could affect that prediction as follows:
A bail-out for the savings and loans will occur this year and will cost each U.S.
citizen $1,000.
The U.S fiscal deficit can only be reduced by higher taxes, and it is expected
that corporation taxes will be increased.
New Soviet links offer the United States the chance to reduce its obligations
to NATO and give economic credits to Russia, which would help reduce the
budget and trade deficits.
Action will have to be taken on the debt burden of the less developed countries.
Action will have to be taken on the growth of leveraged buyout debt.
"New Frontiers in Technology"
Hans Geyer, Assistant General Manager
Intel Europe
Intel has spent $250 million in the last five years on CAD, and every Intel design
engineer has a Sun hooked to VAXes and IBM mainframes for simulation. Thus, Intel's
'Megaprocessor' strategy for 1-million-plus transistor chips like the 486, i860, and the
new version of its 80960 is well supported. These chips require close cooperation in the
early stages of the design cycle between design technologists, process technologists, and
manufacturing personnel. The result is that Intel's chips will be made on processes so
complicated and unique to Intel that no other company will be capable of manufacturing
them. Processor technology is evolving fast toward the microprocessor of the future,
which, by 2000, will have 100 million transistors, 250-MHz operation, 2,000 mips and
1-billion-flops performance.
"Manufacturing Globally"
Joel Monnier, Worldwide Corporate Manufacturing Manager
SGS-Thorason Microelectronics
The Japanese strength is in manufacturing science. SGS-Thomson has targeted the
manufacturing standards it wants to attain within the next six years to match Japanese
capability. The key is equipment uptime: SGS-Thomson's target is to increase the
average length of time for which equipment works without stopping from today's
© 1989 Dataquest Incorporated July ESAM Newsletter