Richard,
After looking through the link, I'm pretty convinced that these are just the standard newsgroups that anyone can post to. I don't think there's anything special about them, and I doubt they'd clam up if we posted to them.
On the other hand, why bother? From what I've seen over the last two years, we can find technical experts who claim that RDRAM is everything from a terrific technology (including the friend of mine who turned me on to Rambus who designs memory-interfaces into ASICs for one of the hard drive companies) to techical experts who think that RDRAM is a piece of junk. Kind of like getting "expert witnesses" for trials.
Personally, I think the technology is technically interesting and has some benefits, but that is 5% of why I'm invested in Rambus. The 95% reason is Intel and Sony. Intel is only going to build RDRAM interfaces in their systems (you can review this board for all of the announcements on system support, like Timna, etc.) and they have too much invested in Rambus to back out now. Even if it is shown that there is no speed advantage between single channel RDRAM and 133Mhz SDRAM, they won't back out. RDRAM is expandable for the future both in the number of channels as well as the base speed (e.g. you could use 133Mhz SDRAM as the core to get 2.1GBps). SDRAM is at it's life's end.
Also, Sony has selected RDRAM for their playstation specifically over DDR DRAM. Compaq has announced that the Alpha will support RDRAM. AMD has announced that they'll support RDRAM (presumably once their customers can get some supply). Panasonic has announced that they'll use RDRAM for their HDTV. And on and on.
So you have to ask yourself: do I know more than the engineers at Intel, Sony, Compaq, AMD, and Panasonic? Do these people posting on the various boards know more than the engineers at Intel, Sony, Compaq, AMD, and Panasonic who have all selected RDRAM? If you believe they do, then you definitely should not invest in Rambus. No one will hate you <G>. On the other hand, if you feel that Intel, Sony, Compaq, AMD, and Panasonic know what they're doing, then buy along with the rest of us.
But don't worry about the FUD.
Dave |
