"...anything new from...Fred Hager ? "
he sent this e-mail to members a couple of days ago.
Subject: Fredhager.com Email Update 10.31.00 (Text Version)
Date:
Tue, 31 Oct 2000 16:48:6 -1200
From:
"Fredhager.com" <members@fredhager.com>
Rambus News
Rambus has suffered a decline in price today due to an unverified report
that pointed to Intel dropping Rambus from all but high-end workstations
after the second quarter of 2001. The alleged news from Intel was
originally published in Electronic Business News over the weekend, and it
was re-released earlier today on many of the business wires. The article
cites a confidential roadmap obtained from Intel that shows Rambus-based
systems, like the 820 and 850 discontinued from the roadmap by mid-2001.
Intel has not confirmed any of this, and we are awaiting more news from the
company.
We believe this does not change our Rambus outlook in the least bit, but it
does put more fear into the minds of Rambus investors. Now, more than
ever, many people are convinced Rambus is relying upon their intellectual
property claims to produce their revenue. And that may be true. We
believe RDRAM is the best memory for processors with increasing speeds, and
it is the logical solution for future systems. We do not believe this news
is anything that threatens Rambus, but we will push back our $200 target to
March of this year, due to the speculation. This does not mean we have
changed our long-term outlook for Rambus - we haven't. And Rambus may very
well meet our original target. But, like last year's delay with the 820
when we had to push our target out a few months, we will also this year.
For the record, we did meet our revised target last year, and we believe if
events proceed as we are confident they will with Rambus' legal pursuits,
both our near and long-term targets will be met.
Additionally, DDR chipsets were announced yesterday from AMD, which has
also added to the fear over the future of the Rambus technology. While 1.2
GHz DDR has been introduced, the preliminary benchmark testing does not
show a much-improved performance benefit over current SDRAM. By most
accounts, there seems to be at best an 8-10% increase in performance.
Also, the pricing of DDR, while for quite some time was promised to be on
par with SDRAM, is significantly more expensive, and closer to the pricing
of the upcoming Pentium 4 at 1.4 GHz with Rambus.
Remember, just because a news article has been published, verifiable or
not, it does not change the performance of Rambus, nor does it alter any
patents already locked up by the company. The mood might be different now,
and the only thing that will change this is the verifiable performance from
the P4, and licensing agreements.
Rambus is not, and has never been an easy stock to own. But we have been
rewarded in the past for cutting through the nonsense, and sticking to the
fundamentals. This time last year Rambus was considered dead due to the
delay in the 820. Currently, it is still one of the best investments of
2000. The Rambus story has not changed, despite the volumes of negative
articles that have been published over the years. We believe Rambus will
prevail in the courts and the company and its shareholders will be rewarded
by both their intellectual property and their current RDRAM technology.
In closing, we believe Intel will not drop Rambus from any roadmap if the
performance of the P4 is strong enough to support volume production. An
Intel spokesperson reiterated their support for Rambus today, saying that
Rambus is the primary solution for their performance desktop solutions. If
RDRAM pricing drops from its current 50% premium over SDRAM to within 20%
by the end of 2001, as both Intel and Rambus predict, and the performance
is greater than 30%, as Intel has stated, there will be little motivation
for the market to choose SDRAM or DDR solution over Rambus. These
projections have been verified by Rambus and Intel, and is what we believe
is more important to focus on than an unverifiable, unpublished roadmap,
from a questionable source.
Thank you,
The Fredhager.com Staff |
