Hi hdl; Re the pricing trend on DDR and RDRAM, evidence of a fixed delay between DDR and RDRAM pricing... Maybe you're onto something, though I doubt it:
PC2100 PC800 Delay
$0.500 05/07/01 >05/24/01 >00/17
$0.600 04/12/01 >05/24/01 >01/12
$0.700 04/02/01 >05/24/01 >01/22
$0.800 04/02/01 >05/24/01 >01/22
$0.900 03/22/01 05/09/01 01/17
$1.000 03/06/01 04/26/01 01/20
$1.100 03/01/01 04/23/01 01/22
$1.200 02/27/01 04/23/01 01/26
$1.300 01/22/01 04/02/01 02/10
http://www.members.home.com/smsperling/data/daily_dhtml_RAMs.htm
The dates shown are the first date in the smsperling data where the memory type first went below the price to the left. The delays are my quick calculation assuming all months have 30 days, (incorrect assumption). Since sperling's early pricing for DDR is not based on the same source as his later DDR pricing, (and is therefore way too low), I've ignored his DDR pricing for before January 12th, when he shows a one day 60% increase in price.
Th ">" indicate that the clock is still running, so the date is later, and the delay is longer than what is shown. As usual, check these numbers for correctness.
Re: "perhaps costs of production of rdram will go down quickly and so price of rdram will go down sufficiently for rambus to sell a lot at a profitable price." The short answer is something like: "Monkeys could fly out of my butt, but despite the risk, I continue to keep my pants buttoned anyway." The longer answer is:
(1) Prices and costs are different. Even Samsung acknowledges that RDRAM has higher production costs. In addition, there are higher costs associated with RIMMs.
(2) The profitability of RDRAM doesn't matter, except to the memory makers. Rambus doesn't actually sell it, they take a percentage off the top. The memory users are the only ones wanting memory cheap, and we get it there by making sure that we always design for what we expect will be the cheapest memory type. Right now, the design community is almost unanimous in expecting the cheapest memory type for the future to be SDRAM and DDR. Where high bandwidths are required, we will go with DDR. SDRAM will remain considerably cheaper than DDR for another year or so, then the volumes will have moved over enough to the DDR side that they will be equivalent in pricing.
-- Carl |
