Hi The Prophet; Re who to believe about RDRAM, me or Samsung...
The previous post gave the view of the memory market from someone who watches it a bit from the inside. This post is largely a collection of Samsung's previous predictions. Like I mentioned before, when the memory makers make a prediction, it almost always turns out to be in error on the liberal side. That is, they predict big ramps up that aren't as big, prices decline but not as much as they said, etc. But the real issue here is whether you should believe the latest prognostications from Samsung.
In a sense, the thread's already beaten this horse to death, but it used to be Jim Handy at Dataquest who's figures were worshipped by the Rambus followers. Dataquest repeatedly predicted that RDRAM would eventually be the mainstream memory type, but they kept having to reduce the near term figures. Finally, early this year, they admitted that DDR and RDRAM are running neck and neck for 2001.
Now that Dataquest has abandoned you guys, you are quoting Samsung. Okay. I have a much larger collection of busted Dataquest predictions than Samsung, but I don't mind digging up some Samsung quotes for you.
Samsung has been putting out pump estimates for RDRAM production and pricing promises for many years. That you believe their latest PR is a sign that you simply don't know this industry well enough to know who and what to believe. If Samsung really knew that RDRAM pricing was going to drop to SDRAM pricing later this year they'd be doing the same thing Micron is doing with DDR -- offering to sell it based on contracts written that way. (The sad fact is that all the memory makers pump their estimates in press releases. So do the industry pundits in their published estimates, for that matter. Memory conversions never happen as quickly as they say they are going to, and pricing never drops as fast either. That's why I'm charting 256MB DIMMs, by the time either DDR or RDRAM reaches SDRAM pricing the 128MB modules will be, by definition, obsolete, since the 128MB SDRAM DIMMs already are too cheap to bother with.)
Here's Samsung proving that DDR production for graphics is huge:
Sep 29, 2000
Samsung Unveils the World's Fastest Graphics Memory Chip
Demand for graphics memory is skyrocketing along with the explosive growth of the Internet and the use of multimedia products that include moving pictures. Samsung Electronics expects sales of its high-speed 500Mbps 128M DDR SDRAM to surpass US$700 million next year.
samsungelectronics.com
Here's Samsung saying that their new DDR 512Mb chips are going to be 60% cheaper to produce than current chips:
Feb 9, 2001
Samsung Secures Technology for 4Gb DRAM
Samsung selected the 16-bit data input/output structure and integrated the design technology of double data rate (DDR) and single data rate (SDR) chips.
Samsung officials say that applying the new 0.10-micron design rule to the 256Mb and 128Mb DRAM chips currently under production will lower production costs by at least 60%. Thus, the company will secure a stronger price competitiveness in the marketplace.
samsungelectronics.com
Here are some Samsung quotes from long enough ago that you can check them against what actually happened:
EE-Times, April 22, 1999
Samsung said it expects the RDRAM market to account for 50 percent, or $13.5 billion, of DRAM sales by 2001.
eetimes.com
bloomberg, ptnewell, mishedlo, September 7, 2000
Samsung has been steadily upping its own RDRAM production. In its most recent estimate, just about two weeks ago, Samsung stated that: "Samsung estimates 7% of the total DRAM market will be RDRAM in 2000, increasing to 15-20% in 2001"." #reply-14343741
By November 14th, 2000, when Samsung had to cut down their estimate for 2000 from the 7.0% quoted above to just 5.5% (i.e. $1.7 billion / $30 billion). That's right. They lost one fifth of their year's production estimate in a bit over 9 weeks, LOL:
samsungelectronics.com
-- Carl |
