Tony: From the Rambus thread RE Intel joint development
TOKYO (Nikkei)--Five major Japanese, U.S., European and South Korean semiconductor memory makers reached a
basic agreement on Wednesday with Intel Corp. to jointly develop advanced general-purpose DRAM chips for personal computers, sources close to the deal said.
The five are an NEC Corp. (6701)-Hitachi Ltd. (6501) alliance, Micron Technology Inc. of the U.S., Samsung
Electronics Co. and Hyundai Electronics Industries Co. of South Korea, plus Infinion Technologies, a spin-off of
Siemens AG.
They together control about 80% of the global DRAM market.
The partners are poised to develop next-generation models of Direct Rambus memories, which is currently one
of the standard chips.
They will try to set standards for 1-gigabit DRAMS and jointly develop such models. Commercialization of such
products is expected to be conducted by the participating companies possibly by the end of 2002, the sources said.
The companies are setting up a joint organization and will provide engineers for the project. They plan to collect
royalties from nonparticipating firms.
The joint move is intended to share the burden of developing next-generation chips, which cost tens of billion yen to
design because of the need to review basic circuitry designs, the sources added. The joint efforts will not be applied to
developing larger memory capacities. Each member company will separately try to enhance the capacities of its own
chips.
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Now, what does this mean? Anyone who can read between the lines of such announcements would do the thread a service to provide an interpretation or translation.
Or am I the only one that reads these releases and feels that what is not said is just as important as what is said?
Count me as one of the paranoid. dmf |
