Hi Gene Parrott; This whole thing boils down to one simple fact: "There can only be one". That is, there can only be one mainstream memory, and that is the memory that is cheapest. Those of us in the industry know this deeply, as we've seen it happen over and over again. The cheapest memory wins mainstream, and the mainstream memory is cheapest. Niche memories are expensive, and provide special features, and are not mainstream. At this point in time, Micron is pushing to make DDR the next mainstream memory. Micron is doing this by providing DDR cheaply. Samsung, in stark contrast, is not pushing RDRAM to be the next mainstream memory. Samsung is keeping RDRAM prices very high, the parts are still not available on the spot chip market, and Samsung has not promised to drop prices for RDRAM. Ever. Samsung has stated that they expect their manufacturing costs to drop for RDRAM later this year, but that is nowhere near as significant as offering to make as much as anybody can use, at a price equal to SDRAM, which is what it takes to mainstream a new memory technology.
Re: "IMO, the large quantities and low prices of DDR on PriceWatch is a strong indicator of poor market acceptance."
I suppose that in your opinion, the even larger quantities and even lower prices of SDRAM on PriceWatch is a strong indicator of even worse market acceptance, LOL. You're not making sense. For years Rambus longs have been saying that DDR was going to be expensive. They were wrong. Get used to it.
Re: "Again, you have to ask yourself why there are so many SKU's on PriceWatch. IMO, it's a very negative indicator."
There are lots of SKUs for DDR on PriceWatch because a lot of companies are selling it. This is called success, particularly in the DIY business. Let's think about this carefully for a minute. The DDR you see for sale on PriceWatch is sold by dealers, some of whom bought it from Micron. Now you know for a fact that the price of DDR has been dropping like a stone for 2 months. Do you really think that those dealers are so stupid that they are holding DDR DIMMs in inventory and having them drop in price every day for two months? Of course they're moving inventory.
What you're seeing is a bottom up roll out. This doesn't look quite like an Intel roll out, which is top down, but as far as a memory roll out, this is normal activity. A bottom up roll out starts with the DIY and slowly works up the chain. Already HP and Compaq no longer offer SDRAM with their build to order Athlon CPUs. They've gone to DDR only. Do you really think that they're doing this in order to get rid of excess DDR inventory? This is a sign of market acceptance. PC133 also had a bottom up roll out, since Intel did not at first support it (and, in fact, said that it wasn't feasible), and the Rambus masses said that PC133 wasn't going to make it either. They were wrong then and they are wrong now. The only difference between now and then is that the Rambus masses weigh a lot less now, LOL.
I already posted a fairly complete description of the SDRAM roll out, with over a dozen links to contemporaneous trade articles: #reply-13764437 Why don't you go back and read it, and compare what is going on with DDR and RDRAM to the SDRAM conversion?
Let's briefly review our memory history, so you can see how it is that the memory makers help these little transitions along:
Fujitsu Gets In Synch
Jonathan Cassell, Techweb, June 27, 1994
... Fujitsu Microelectronics Inc. said last week that it plans to stop selling conventional DRAMs and will instead concentrate its resources on the development of faster SDRAM (synchronous DRAM) technology. ...
techweb.com
Now has Samsung stated that they aren't going to sell DDR anymore? No! In fact, their biggest research chips are all DDR. Samsung is in mass production on 1GB DDR DIMMs, but doesn't even have any 1GB RDRAM RIMMs under development:
usa.samsungsemi.com
usa.samsungsemi.com
Here's Samsung pushing SDRAM into mainstream memory status, 5 years ago:
Samsung grabs for 64-Mbit DRAM lead
Ron Wilson, EE-Times, December 11, 1995
...
"Right now, SDRAMs are selling at about a 25-percent premium over similarly organized EDO parts. In the first half of 1996, we will drop that figure to 16 percent, then 8 percent in the second half. In the first half of 1997, there will be no premium for SDRAM."
...
techweb.com
Now has Samsung made any promise to drop the RDRAM premium to zero 12 months from now? No! All they've done is issue press releases saying that they're making lots of RDRAM, and that someday they hope to get the stuff cheap. If Samsung wanted to make RDRAM mainstream (instead of the highly profitable niche that it is), they would simply announce that 12 months from now they would sell RDRAM for the same price as SDRAM. That's exactly what Micron just did with DDR!
You think that low DDR prices are some sort of horrible shock to Micron? No! They announced that they were going to do this more than 3 months ago (see #reply-15329994 ). You should click on the Samsung slides from that show, by the way, you'd learn that they're working on DDR-II prototypes, and expect PC333 this year:
viatech.com
When I posted the above link, not a single Rambus long bothered to reply to it. Okay, now that the stock price has been brutalized and Wall Street has made it very clear that they no longer expect RDRAM to be the next mainstream memory (see Edelstone's commentary), maybe you'll pay attention. There was a time when Rambus could claim to be "overlooked" by Wall Street. Wall Street did pay attention, and now they've rejected Rambus.
-- Carl |
