<p>lt cap,</p> <p>Good that the analyst concluded that Transmode is on track, with no mention of an InPhi impact, which Fallon endorsed at the CC. I wished the analyst had put a PT of $28 rather than $18, but this is the stock that says patience pays off, and for my portfolio, there's not much to do except wait for what will be a fairly long time period. CIEN has been marching steadily north, and I find no particular news that drives that. </p> <p>Read a story about a company that gives an accurate (I doubt it) gauge of cable customer satisfaction. Average score was 64 which, while it was acknowledged is the lowest for the different kinds of businesses this company provides such surveys for, said that Time-Warner and ATT were at the top, with scores of 70 and 69, respectively. (70% of any cable providers customer are satisfied with their service? You are joking, yes?)

 The useful takeaway was pointing out that while most cable providers had virtual monopolies in the space they operated, when there was a choice (they were using Charlotte (I think) N.C. as an example), if one cable provider upped its speeds, the others followed suit in order to be competitive.  While that's obviously good news for eqiupment makers, I'd think the time-line for more 'open markets' is pretty long.</p> <p>A CSCO story cited their use of equipment maker Integra in SDN and other applications. Don't know anything much about them, except the article cited an expectation of a 368% increase in revs over 5 years, with a break-even point of 9 months.</p> <p>Freaking NVDA - Last I looked they were 44 up from the low of 19 y/o/y. Now they're 47 something. The launch of their new high-end video cards - GTX  1080 and 1070, has been phenomenal - only GTX 1080 is currently available, but it's not, as every store that carries it it sold out. One might say that it's just a 'first-blush' effect that will fade. Except: All the reviews are astoundingly positive, as reviewers eyeballs melt down their cheeks. The MSRP for the 1080 is $699, while the 1070 is....I think $500? $550? can't quite remember. But reviewers have pointed out that the 1070, with a price point somewhere in the $500's, is faster than NVDA's last-cycle ultimate top card - the Titan X, which had an MSRP of over $1,000. </p> <p>AMD has gone crazy, currently $4.46. They last 19 cents last quarter, but CEO Su said they will return to profitability in the 2nd half of the year. There was also mention of their ($292 mil?) investment/partnership(?) in China. *Might* be the case that, like everyone else, if you couple with a Chinese company, the dictatorship is much less likely to harrass you. I supposed 'China' still ahs the 'ring of money' to it.</p> <p>I can't find a whole lot on their new Polaris-architecture  cards, which should be coming out soon, except that they're designed to be priced as mid-range rather than high-end cards.  I still think NVDA will own them, with the price points I've cited. And I don't know what their plans for desktop CPUs are, but INTC just released a slew of new 'extreme' Broadwell-E chips, which, along with the months-old new CPUs for the Z7170 motherboards (i7 core 5th gen CPU's I think) will provide a challenge to AMD's offerings in that area (it gets a little confusing, as the new Broadwell-E's are really successors  to the 4th gen i7 Gpus, they're being listed as 6th gen i7 chips AFAIK.) In any case, I don't think Intel has much worries about the desktop space - even though the new Broadwells are something of a 'niche' market for gamers, invading the already-established business use of the X99 motherboard chipset. Although the top-of-the line Broadwell E's have 10 cores, with a 25mb cache, are MSRP'd at around $1500 I believe, the less hefty and affordable  (6 cores? 8 cores? - and a 15mb cache) new Broadwell-E's  seem to be quite reasonably priced. The broadwell-E's are targeted at motherboards with an x99 chipset - originally that factor was used as a business/server platform I believe, but gamers began invading it in force when the CPUs designed for it began 'future proofing' better than the 4th gen i7 chips, given the release of new CPU chips for the new Z7170 motherboards. Excuse me if I've got some techinical catagories wrong. Short story is that Intel I think will dominate desktop, at least for gamers, and probably for work applications as rollouts continue.</p> <p> </p>