Tom
This week we note that the rambus memory upgrade prices from Dell have nearly doubled
I ordered one today and found base system price went up about $100. The lead time for SDRAM computer is 10 days lead time for RDRAM based computer is 30 days.
We know the bottleneck is not the fabs but the ability to test RDRAM and RIMMs with the limited base of test equipment out there at this time vs the large quantities of RIMMs that DELL now requires.
The only difference I can come up with for the increase in RDRAM prices is that DELL is the only OEM selling systems with RIMMs in them so if you are a RIMM manufacturer who has the capacity to assemble and test RIMMs and Dell has a 30 day shortfall; then you are going to sell them to DELL at whatever price you can get for them as fast as you can make them.
Also, It seems that Hitachi wants in on RDRAM and NEC is 50/50 on initial 128 mBit production of SDRAM vs RDRAM but wants to see more demand for RDRAM before committing additional capacity to RDRAM is I read it.
ebns.com
NEC, Hitachi split DRAM tasks
By Jack Robertson
Electronic Buyers' News
(12/03/99, 03:28:23 PM EDT)
Dividing up the heavy lifting that lies before it, the new DRAM joint venture between NEC Corp. and Hitachi Ltd. is handing responsibility for emerging memory architectures to different corporate divisions, based on the individual strengths of the parent companies.
Although joint marketing and manufacturing is at least 16 months away, the companies plan to split next-generation chip assignments, with Hitachi assuming control of all double-data-rate synchronous DRAM development, and NEC carrying out the Direct Rambus DRAM program.
?When customers want either DDR or Direct Rambus next year, each company will refer them to the partner responsible for that device,? said Keiichi Shimakura, associate senior vice president and head of NEC's semiconductor group, in an interview with EBN.
However, Tokumasa Yasui, general manager of memory operations at Hitachi, who will serve as executive vice president of the new joint venture, said Hitachi isn't ready to cede Direct Rambus to NEC yet.
Although Hitachi is behind NEC in its Direct RDRAM production cycle, the company wants to retain the option to produce the new chip should it become established in the market before the joint venture has a common production program.
?Hitachi is now sampling Direct Rambus chips, but we are waiting to see market demand before deciding to go into production,? Yasui said.
The joint venture, NEC-Hitachi Memory Inc., will debut late in December and begin combining DRAM development and foundry production. Marketing and in-house production operations will be integrated slowly in a process that should be concluded by April 1, 2001, Shimakura said. Until then, NEC and Hitachi will maintain separate DRAM sales organizations. Shimakura said the former rivals will strive to bring their respective marketing programs together, sort out distributor channels, and address accounts that may overlap. ?This all will take time,? he said. ?We don't want to rush into anything.?
For now, NEC and Hitachi will also keep separate DRAM facilities. Once the NEC-Hitachi Memory venture is operational, the companies will outsource DRAM production to NEC's Hiroshima, Japan, memory fab and a Hitachi fab in Singapore. Shimakura said the companies could designate other fabs as foundries too, depending on demand.
With a joint company making DRAM, NEC will now scuttle an earlier plan to outsource its chips to Taiwanese foundries, a move that has been adopted by the majority of Japan's DRAM makers.
During the transition period next year, NEC said it will cut by half its planned output of Direct RDRAM, to about one million chips a month.
?A major customer this fall severely cut back its original Direct Rambus order,? Shimakura said. ?As a result, [we] canceled our orders for additional Direct Rambus testers and new back-end equipment. We've already installed enough equipment to handle the smaller level of Direct Rambus production. We'll wait to see how the market develops be- fore adding new production equipment for additional Rambus production.?
At the same time, NEC will keep its 64-Mbit SDRAM production at a monthly level of 10 million chips, about 25% higher than originally anticipated. The company will continue to ramp 128-Mbit SDRAM output from a present level of 1 million units a month to 5 million by next April.
In all, the company is aiming to grab a 20% share of the global DRAM market, Shimakura said. Based on figures from research firm Dataquest Inc., NEC and Hitachi had a combined DRAM market share of 17% in 1998. ?It shouldn't be too difficult to expand this to reach a 20% level,? said Shimakura, who added that this would place the company on a par with DRAM leaders Hyundai MicroElectronics Co. Ltd., Micron Technology Inc., and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
In addition to discrete DRAM, Shimakura said the venture will assume responsibility for marketing embedded-DRAM and flash-memory chips, although efforts related to custom-embedded DRAM used in high-performance graphics chips will remain with each parent company. NEC-Hitachi Memory could also take over production, sales, and marketing of discrete flash-memory chips, he said, increasing production to compete against flash giants like Fujitsu Ltd., Intel Corp., and Toshiba Corp.
Operating as a 50-50 partnership, the companies named Kenji Tokuyama, executive vice president and general manager of NEC's LSI Memory operations, as president of NEC-Hitachi Memory. The companies agreed that the next president will come from within Hitachi's ranks, although there is no plan to rotate the post on a regular basis.
While local press reports indicated that the new company might soon welcome another partner-possibly Mitsubishi Electric Corp.-Shimakura dismissed the notion.
?We'll have our hands full trying to integrate the DRAM operations of two companies, without adding the complexity of bringing in a third company,? he said. ?We haven't even been contacted by Mitsubishi about any such idea.?
Future endeavors, such as taking the company public and shifting to 300-mm-wafer production, are still on the distant horizon, although both considerations have been included in the venture's long-range plans.
NEC had announced a 300-mm-wafer fab would be started in Hiroshima, with initial production expected in 2001. Last week, Shimakura said the schedule had been pushed back to 2002 at the earliest. He said it is unclear if the first 300-mm-wafer fab will be built at Hiroshima or on vacant land NEC holds in Roseville, Calif
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