Hi tinkershaw; Re: "Nah, firms will never move from unprofitable to profitable products. Won't happen."
Fact: Old memory types do not become obsolete because they get too inexpensive, LOL!!! They become obsolete by becoming too expensive.
I suppose that the above is an esoteric economic argument that doesn't make progress with the room temp IQ types, so lets look at it from the point of view of design wins.
Intel gave up and started designing chipsets for DDR. Sony is rumored to be using DDR for their PS2 replacement. Nintendo replaced RDRAM with DDR. PixelFusion eliminated RDRAM from their design. Sun apparently cancelled the MAJC which used RDRAM, and is rumored to be using DDR for the UltraSparc IIIi. ALi gave up on RDRAM and built DDR. Every other design firm using RDRAM is too small for me to remember.
That's all she wrote. The only good news in the above is that Sony has not yet publicly admitted to replacing RDRAM with some other memory type. Every other designer of RDRAM is either insignificant, or is now using DDR. Every one. No exceptions.
On the other hand, of the companies that supported DDR from the start; AMD, VIA, ALi, SiS, ServerWorks, IBM, NVidia, etc., not a single one of them ever had to give up and start any RDRAM designs. None. Not one. No exceptions.
That's the demand side. Solid win for DDR. Sure RDRAM is being produced at maybe 10% of total DRAM production, but those are only a couple design wins, and the big one, Intel, is working hard on DDR.
From the supplier point of view, (i.e. the memory makers) the situation seems more complicated, but it is highly tilted in DDR's favor as well.
Every single company that has ever shipped an RDRAM memory chip is either getting out of the memory business, or is advertising DDR chips. On the other hand, there are plenty of memory (chip!) makers that are shipping DDR, but have never shipped RDRAM. The loss of business goes only in the direction of DDR, there have been zero defections from DDR to RDRAM. Yes, there are constantly rumors of future RDRAM production, promises of someday samples, but these rumors and promises have been going on for 3 years.
That's the supply side. Solid win for DDR. Sure a couple companies are producing RDRAM, and the short term trend is up, but the long term trend is lousy.
It's over.
But I think it's cool that you're still fighting. Last year, when this POS hit triple digits, it was already obvious that DDR was the memory of the future, and it was also clear that the memory makers were not all going to roll over for ridiculous royalties. But I think you should get a medal for supporting Rambus this late in the game. It would be almost understandable to claim that Rambus had a prayer of pulling off an upset in the patent department (especially in europe), but to argue that RDRAM is going to be the memory of the future indicates that you're a real die hard.
-- Carl |
