An interesting article in the April 14th Electronic Engineering Times about Rambus and Intel.
Rambus Inc.'s planned initial public offering (IPO) has shed light on the
sensitive issue of how it will work with Intel Corp. while also striving to
broaden its customer base.
The IPO is expected before the end of July. Three million shares will be
added to more than 17 million now held by employees and venture-capital
backers. Don't rush out to buy unless you are a major client of one of the
bankers or brokers, or are otherwise part of the privileged minority.
Intel, by dint of its agreement to back the Rambus architecture, has the
right to buy a million shares at $10 each, though there are some interesting
quid pro quos.
For one, Intel can exercise the warrants only after at least 20 percent of
Intel's chip sets ship with the Rambus interface logic. While that sounds
like a clever way of making sure Intel remains committed to the Rambus
architecture, the financial ties mean relatively little to Intel.
The agreement also keeps Intel from using Rambus patents to develop a
logic interface to other high-bandwidth DRAMs that might become
tempting, such as the Synclink DRAM or double-data-rate (DDR)
synchronous DRAMs now in development.
More importantly, the agreement forbids Intel to get between Rambus
and microprocessor competitors such as AMD and Cyrix, or chip-set
vendors, should they choose to develop a Rambus-capable interface.
Now that Intel is committed to using Rambus DRAMs and the
MPU-to-memory Rambus channel to market by 1999, Rambus
obviously wants to get the rest of the computer industry on board as well.
Intel also made clear it won't tolerate Rambus shenanigans. Though
Rambus doesn't disclose initial license fees, or per-chip royalties, it has
been clear that early Rambus backers like NEC and Toshiba got a better
agreement than the DRAM companies that will sign up from here on out.
The agreement bars Rambus from charging more than a 2 percent royalty
after the RDRAMs start shipping in volume as PC main memory.
Rambus could ask for a 2.5 percent royalty from a latecomer, but the
royalty must drop to 2 percent or less once the PC industry adopts
RDRAMs.
Finally, though Intel may contribute technology to the 1.6-Gbit/second,
Direct Rambus, version, Rambus controls that specification and has the
rights to license it.
Moving to a 16-bit-wide interface, to a 400-MHz clock speed with
double data rate, and improving the protocol, will deliver video data rates
to the desktop. That is what will keep Intel happy, no matter how valuable
its Rambus shares become.
The only question remaining is how fast DRAM makers can master the
hidden intricacies of the Rambus interface, and get their yields up and
prices down to the levels of today's memory solution.
-David Lammers is Tokyo bureau chief for EE Times. |
