Hi JD_Canuck; Re: "Guess we will have to wait til tomorrow afternoon to see how the anti-Rambus forces spin those two." Nah, I'll correct your remarkably erroneous post now, no need to wait. I hope you don't mind if I correct some of your capitalization &c., I hate to have to quote stuff that looks illiterate. As usual, your post suffered from the standard Rambus long tendency to compare apples to oranges. I really don't know how you guys are able to survive on this dangerous planet. By the way, I'm not posting this explanation here in any kind of hope that I'm going to educate you enough that you will understand the subtleties of the memory market, I know that's hopeless. Heck, half the trade press authors don't understand this, why should you?
Re: "Why would Samsung suddenly increase their estimates of the RDRAM percentage of the total DRAM market to 35% from 25%."
Let's repeat these quotes, just for the readers' convenience:
Samsung officials say they believe that RDRAM and DDR will make up about 25 percent each of its memory mix, with SDRAM accounting for the remaining 50 percent, by the end of the year.
news.cnet.com
"The Korean player said Rambus DRAMs will account for 35 percent of the DRAM sector's sales this year, emerging as a profit leader in the wake of falling chip prices.
...
The price tag on 128M Rambus DRAMs is set at US$6-$7 per unit, while SDRAM chips are priced in a range of US$1.60-$1.70 each."
nikkeibp.asiabiztech.com
So let's see what differences there are between the 25% figure and the 35% figure:
(1) The 25% figure is for the end of the year, while the 35% is for the year overall. That means that the 35% figure is bullish for RDRAM production.
(2) The 25% figure is for Samsung's production, while the 35% figure is for total world production. That means that the 35% figure is bullish for RDRAM production.
(3) The 25% figure is a production "mix" number, while the 35% is a "sales" number. That is because Samsung can predict what they will make, but not necessarily what they will sell it for.
To convert the 35% "sales" figure into a "mix" number, we have to correct by the ratio of RDRAM prices to SDRAM prices. It's quite handy that the AsiaBizTech link provides the prices of RDRAM (~$6.50) and SDRAM (~1.65). The ratio between them is about 3.9, so converting the 35% figure into bits gives:
World RDRAM bits = (.35/3.9)/(.35/3.9 + .65) = 12.1%
I'm not even going to try to explain that to you.
So now the 25% and 35% figures make complete sense.
For 2001, Samsung is estimating world RDRAM production will be about 12% as measured in bits, or 35% by price. This is not at all incompatible with Samsung estimating that they will be producing 25% of their production (in bits) as RDRAM and another 25% as DDR at the end of the year.
Re: "If the RDRAM sales began the year at less than 2%...this would be a 1650% increase in demand....amazing!!!!"
The 2% at the beginning of the year was measured in bits. Going from that to 12% is a 500% increase, which is not at all unusual for a production ramp. The problem for RDRAM is that their peak production quarter is going to be either 3Q01 or 4Q01. After that, it's down hill, and that's why Samsung is switching over to DDR.
-- Carl |
