Hi all; Yet another Intel/RDRAM article today:
Intel’s Roadmap Reveals Possible Rambus Contractual Conflicts
Intel’s high-stakes alliance with Rambus Inc. to gain more control over of the DRAM industry is not panning out, according to one industry watcher. That is why the House that X86 Built is now backing off its steadfast support for direct Rambus DRAM (RDRAM) as the only memory type for its mainstream desktop computing platforms.
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“Intel chose the wrong bet,” McComas said. “They chose the one non-standard memory type that polarized them from their memory suppliers. They chose Rambus, and tried to take it mainstream and it failed.”
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To understand Intel’s motivations means going back to 1995 when the industry experienced massive DRAM shortages that drove prices through the roof. That drove consumers to spend most of their money on memory chips and the DRAM manufacturers were “raping” the PC industry, according to McComas.
Memory was so expensive that when consumers spent their dollars upgrading to 16 MByte and 32 MByte DRAM modules, they preferred not to spend money for the bigger and faster Intel CPUs.
But back in 1996, Intel had also been pleading for denser, more robust memory technologies to complement its processors, according to Sherry Garber, analyst with Semico Research Corp., Phoenix, Ariz. At the time, the DRAM industry’s answer was Sync-Link, which wasn’t satisfactory for Intel’s needs.
If Intel gained control of the memory technology through Rambus, McComas said, they could slow the migration to higher density chips and force memory manufacturers to battle each other in price. Theoretically, that could have caused DRAM prices to drop and then Intel could force its CPU migration path on consumers.
Through its heavy handedness, Intel lost credibility with DRAM manufacturers. Most of them took seed money for RDRAM production lines, but by then, most of them had already evaluated the technology and determined that the synchronous DRAM roadmap was the most logical way to go.
electronicnews.com
-- Carl
P.S. If I were a paranoid Rambus long, I would be taking my medicine today! The industry seems to be out in force. It's almost like they've been saving up these articles for release tonight. |
