MB, Allow me to second your opinion.
I am not going to say that this is free publicity akin to the Intel Pentium flaw in the winter of 94, but, just the fact that pro-RMBSer's(of which there are few) are biting their nails and watching this bulldog-turned-underdog plotting strategies for counter attack, while the ravenous anti-RMBSer's(of which there are many) are dancing out on the streets tonight tells me that the battle has really begun.
While observing the current situation, I have made note of several things:
1. Intel, despite it trying to diversify into venture capital, server farms and networking, is essentially a CPU company. It is IMPERATIVE that Intel make the chip or any periphery to the chip fast, very fast. Bandwidth does not reside on the network alone. The outcome of super-fast bandwidth has to be experienced by the users, us. That can happen only if the bandwidth on the user's machine is fast enough.
2. The perceived transition to DRDRAM has been painful, to say the least. It's the nature of the beast. Who's to say that DDR-DRAM or any other next gen RAM can make it big easily. I remember taking a peek at EE Times in 1997, and there were ads from computer-component companies, such as, Smart Modular, describing Rambus as a revolutionary new technology. That was two years ago. I haven't seen anything about DDR in any of the tech magazines. The point is, Rambus currently has already started to go mainstream. Most of the people will not hear of Rambus until it has been firmly entrenched in the IT infrastructure. That may happen, that may not happen. I am betting that it does.
3. These kind of delays are bound to happen. BBRS's downgrade is similar to the downgrades Citrix was punished with when Microsoft started announcing about its own thin clients. Or when RealNetworks was pummeled when Softee said it would build its own streaming media. Examples are countless.
Having said that, on a personal note, I have held Rambus almost since its IPO, and I have never previously or currently have held such a volatile stock. Not Citrix, not Real, not VISX, not even Iomega.
G'nite. |
