Mark and all RMBS investors:
<The presentation is by Bert McComas, InQuest Market Research, who I notice is one of the organizers for Platform99. I'm personally not familiar with InQuest. However, I believe there is grain of truth(s) to his points. I'd be most interested in perspectives on how relevant these grains will actually turn out to be.>
Bert McComas has always been a harsh skeptic of RDRAM technology. He wrote a few articles on the website Tom's Hardware Guide, where he highlights what he thinks all of the shortcomings of RDRAM are. Here are links to two of his articles:
www5.tomshardware.com
www5.tomshardware.com
He's a very intelligent guy, and probably has much more experience than I do in memory systems, but I can't help but think that this guy has an agenda against Rambus. Some of his criticisms against RDRAM are just normal challenges in moving to any new DRAM technology, such as high cost of infrastructure, platform support, electrical concerns, and transition difficulties. A few of his criticisms are down right false, such as his argument that RDRAM has longer latencies (it doesn't), or that DDR SDRAM has lower system cost burdens than RDRAM (perhaps, but DDR SDRAM has tons of performance and electrical problems of its own).
Bert McComas has also been pushing other non-Rambus technologies, from DDR SDRAM to ESDRAM to something called "Virtual Channel," whatever that is. He also likes to hint at conspiracy theories where Intel is trying to push people to RDRAM in an attempt to further control the PC landscape. The problem is that he hasn't settled on one DRAM technology which he thinks will or should displace RDRAM as the future dominating standard. He looks at PC133 and praises it because it's an easy transition. He looks at ESDRAM and SLDRAM because of its promises of lower latency. He looks at DDR SDRAM and tries to find every reason for companies to support that as well. In other words, I can't help but think that he's trying to preach the "Anything But Rambus" stance.
In short he may have a few grains of truth scattered throughout his presentation, but an unbiased guy he isn't. I wouldn't worry too much about what he says.
Tenchusatsu |
