RMBS continues to haunt and taunt me!
:o)
if rmbs wins this lawsuit it will not matter if rdram is the winner or not, rmbs will get royalties from sdram, rdram and ddrdram...i do not know how to calculate the risk/reward ratio. my incliniation is to let the lawsuit be resolved..if rmbs wins jump in, if not get in only when there are clear signs of a tornado indicating rdram acceptance.
need input please.
141 claims against Hitachi
electronicnews.com.
Rambus Goes on the Offensive
By Tom Murphy
Rambus Inc., Mountain View, Calif., last week filed a patent infringement suit against Hitachi Ltd. in Federal District Court in Delaware, a move that could have disastrous consequences for Hitachi's highly popular SH microprocessor line and its users.
Specifically, the suit seeks an injunction against the importation, sale and manufacture of Hitachi PC-100 SDRAM, PC-133 SDRAM, DDR SDRAM, Double Density Rate, SDRAM, SGRAM, and DIMM modules. All major memory manufacturers produce such parts.
However, the injunction also will impact Hitachi's SH-2, SH-3, SH-4, and SH-5 microprocessor products. If the court grants the injunctions barring Hitachi DRAM imports, the impact on the company's PC OEM customers likely would be minimal, as they could find other SDRAM suppliers. Not so, however, for buyers of the SH microprocessor, of which Hitachi is their sole source.
The buyer with the most to lose may be Sega with its DreamCast, a home video-game console that is based on Hitachi's SH family of microprocessors and one of the hottest selling consumer electronics products on the market. Those processors also power many small Windows CE machines, personal digital assistants and digital still cameras, which are also popular.
"Anything that would inhibit Hitachi's ability to supply parts to that game machine would really hurt Hitachi and it would hurt Sega," said Joe Byrne, analyst for Gartner Group/Dataquest in San Jose.
Rambus filed a total of 141 claims against Hitachi. However, those claims cover only four patents.
"Some SH parts have synchronous DRAM interfaces," Byrne noted. "I think what Rambus is saying is that many implementations of synchronous interfaces violate Rambus' patent. It looks like Rambus took a shotgun instead of a rifle."
Rambus, which has been in the PC spotlight with its high-bandwidth Direct Rambus DRAM part, has been making innovations in DRAM technology since 1991 and the company has waited this long to act on its extensive library of intellectual property, according to Dataquest memory analyst Jim Handy. Rambus had been in negotiations with all of the leading DRAM manufacturers on licensing agreements, but a Rambus spokeswoman said Hitachi simply stopped talking.
A Hitachi spokeswoman declined to comment on the litigation.
The impact Rambus' claims have regarding the memory technology go far beyond just Hitachi's DRAM business.
"The patents are very broad," Handy said. "It would be very hard to make an SDRAM or an SDRAM controller that would not infringe on the patent. DRAM manufacturers have always thought that there are two directions that the DRAM market could take -- either to pay or not to pay Rambus royalties. It appears as though not paying Rambus is not an option. They pretty much have to pay Rambus royalties whether they continue on with the development of DDR or whether they go and support Rambus with all their heart and soul."
In terms of the leading memory makers, Hitachi is among the least supportive of the RDRAM technology. But it could prove interesting to see how the lawsuit affects Hitachi's evolving merger with NEC, a company that has been more supportive of RDRAM.
"This is the first time Rambus has really tried to take advantage of the weight of its patent portfolio," Handy said. "But that's not a surprise because these suits are based on patents that were first filed for in 1990. However, the patents weren't issued until 1999."
With this lawsuit against Hitachi, Rambus is also making other SDRAM manufacturers pay closer attention to Rambus' desires, according to Steve Cullen, memory analyst for Cahners In-Stat Group, Scottsdale, Ariz. "This lawsuit probably won't have any immediate impact. It usually takes a long time for patent lawsuits to go through the courts. But other companies may pay more attention to Rambus."
Rambus says it has invested hundreds of engineer-years and more than $100 million in the development of high-bandwidth chip-connection technologies. It claims to have 80 U.S. and foreign patents in that area.
Rambus has licensed Hitachi to manufacture and sell memory and logic products compatible with RDRAM specifications. But Hitachi has never produced any RDRAM products, Rambus acknowledged. The suit does not relate to compatible memory and logic products. Rather the suit was filed after Hitachi failed to respond to repeated requests by Rambus to discuss infringement analysis on Hitachi's non-RDRAM-compatible products.
Rambus says it invented fundamental aspects of high-speed memory interfaces, which are implemented in SDRAM and DDR SDRAM, and anticipates that semiconductor companies will want to license its technology for use in non-RDRAM-compatible products. |
