Re: Here's a link to an analyst
>Granted, those volumes will be higher toward the end of the year, and much higher in 2001, when Intel and AMD microprocessors....
This was pre intel second thoughts on rambus, which is mainly pre Athlon tests from independents being released. My point from the start has been that as long as Intel can control the high end of the CPU market, and holds the performance image, it can make rambus a huge success. But there are many improved memory architectures available for the next few years, and almost all of them are easier and less expensive to implement. If Intel really does find itself in a tough price/performance battle for the CPU market, rambus will be on hold or dead - at least in PCs. But your estimates are perfectly valid, even, as you say, conservative, for a scenario in which AMD collapses and no one buys them and keeps their technology going.
>he fails to include in his overall totals are workstations and laptops
The only PCs that will be using rambus in that time frame are the one classed as "workstations". Rambus uses too much power and generates too much heat to use in a laptop. How are you going to set up the "wind tunnel" that rambus specs require if you install it in a laptop? As rambus shrinks and power consumption goes down, the same thing happens for the other memory technologies, VC DRAM uses significantly less power than SDRAM and will probably capture the notebook market (except for Apple, which seems in recent reports to be tending towards DDRDRAM)
>if the world ends...
There is only speculation and reports of conversations with sources that cannot be identified at this time (sounds like your justification for rambus :-) But it makes enormous sense. Timna is designed for the entry level market, the most price concious market. This is the last chip you would want to burden with significantly more expensive memory. Is it your feeling that if Intel does support PC100 or PC133 for Timna, "the world ends" for rambus?
>the game station market is estimated at 32 million units in 2000. doubling in 2001
Rambus already supplies memory for the what was the dominant game machine until it started using rambus. This won't be the cause of an explosion in rambus sales.
If AMD fails and Intel sticks by rambus, rambus can't lose, otherwise, rambus will plateau in 2000, then gradually grow as PC sales fade but are replaced by growing video game and video card business. (this is my 5% of sales, $1.20 per share, worst case sceanario)
Even the bad news won't be all that bad, that represents a quadrupuling of current earnings - even if there are fewer initial license fees left for rambus to collect.
Dan |
