<font color=orange>Just when you thought it was safe to short RMBS......
____________________________________________________________
Rambus Says Its Memory Chips First to Reach 1 Gigahertz Speed
Mountain View, California Aug. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Rambus Inc., a semiconductor design company, and two of its manufacturing partners said they will produce the first memory chips capable of transferring data at speeds greater than one gigahertz, the fastest performance to date.
The new design will boost speed 33 percent compared with Rambus' existing dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, chip made by companies such as Korea's Samsung Electronics, the world's largest memory chipmaker. The new Rambus DRAM chip will likely be used in electronic products such as high-definition televisions, set-top boxes and digital video recorders, said Kristine Wiseman, a spokeswoman for Rambus.
Samsung unit Samsung Semiconductor Inc. and Korea's Hyundai Electronics Industries Co. plan to produce memory chips using the new design.
``Samsung has been first-to-market with leading-edge Rambus DRAMs,'' said Ilung Kim, executive director of DRAM marketing at Samsung Electronics, in a statement. ``We are proud to continue this tradition with the announcement of manufacturing and marketing support for the world's highest-bandwidth DRAM.''
Intel
For years Intel Corp., the world's largest chipmaker, has endorsed Rambus technology as the only memory standard that will enable computers to do high-speed processing of data from digital consumer electronic equipment such as camcorders.
Intel last week ended its exclusive endorsement of Rambus, when the company said it will support the synchronous DRAM, or SDRAM, memory standard in addition to Rambus DRAM for its Pentium 4 processor.
The Intel Pentium 4, scheduled for introduction later this year, will need large volumes of memory chips to support its market debut. Industry analysts for this reason have predicted that Intel would be forced to endorse the mainstream SDRAM standard.
Intel said that it will make a chipset for its Pentium 4 processor supporting SDRAM. Chipsets are semiconductors that link a processor with other parts of a computer such as memory and the display.
Intel also said that it may make Pentium 4 chipsets that support still more memory standards.
Last Sunday the company unveiled a 1.13-gigahertz Pentium III processor chip, beating its previous fastest Pentium III running at 1 gigahertz.
Rambus DRAM chips have been expensive to make and currently represent about 5 percent of total memory production. Most memory chips in the marketplace today are based on the SDRAM standard.
The largest market for DRAM chips is personal computers, which use about 80 percent of total production.
Aug/01/2000 1:18 ET
For more stories from Bloomberg News, click here.
(C) Copyright 2000 Bloomberg L.P.
Any redistribution of Bloomberg content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Bloomberg L.P. Any reference to the material must be properly attributed to Bloomberg News.
The information herein was obtained from sources which Bloomberg L.P. and its suppliers believe reliable, but they do not guarantee its accuracy. Neither the information, nor any opinion expressed, constitutes a solicitation of the purchase or sale of any securities or commodities.(C) Copyright 2000 Bloomberg L.P. BLOOMBERG, Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Financial Markets, Bloomberg Television, Bloomberg News Radio are trademarks, tradenames and service marks of Bloomberg L.P. |
