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SAN FRANCISCO — Despite some jitters along the way, suppliers at a technology conference here reported that the infrastructure is in place for Rambus DRAMs to move into the PC market.
Die size remains a concern, suppliers conceded, but all of them maintained that neither the 10-to-25-percent die-size penalty nor a higher price tag should hamper the acceptance of RDRAM for high-performance PCs.
The panel, organized at the Warburg Dillon Read technology conference, included Rambus Inc. chief executive Geoff Tate along with representatives from DRAM suppliers and test and assembly executives.
Die size is the most critical handicap for Rambus parts and is not likely to see improvement soon, panelists said. For Micron, 128-Mbit Rambus parts are 20 to 25 percent larger than their synchronous-DRAM counterparts, said Jeff Mailloux, DRAM marketing manager for Micron Technology Inc. (Boise, Idaho). Samsung Semiconductors Inc. claimed a similar number, while Hyundai Electronics quoted 10 to 15 percent.
Those figures reflect the amount of work it takes to adjust to RDRAM technology, panelists said. Die size is being sacrificed as manufacturers concentrate on keeping yields high, said Avo Kanadjian, senior vice president of memory marketing for Samsung. "Sometimes a slightly [bigger] die size and a slightly improved yield can be a good deal."
Farhad Tabrizi, director of strategic marketing for Hyundai, said DRAM makers had gotten "sloppy" with simpler parts such as extended-data-out memories and would hit technological barriers that were likely to prevent a blitzkrieg ramp-up of Rambus production.
"We just have to learn to deal with it," Tabrizi said. "At this time at Hyundai, the die size is 10 percent [larger than SDRAMs], but there are other, additional factors which disable us."
Rambus' price premium over SDRAM was not seen as a barrier by panelists, who believe that PC OEMs will pay extra for the added performance. One example mentioned repeatedly was the Sony Playstation 2, which uses Rambus' memory architecture to drive its ultra-high-end graphics.
Rambus remains more expensive than SDRAMs, but panelists refused to classify the two as competitors, saying they aim for different uses. As DRAMs enter a new age where different types of memory apply to different devices, high-performance parts are worth more, panelists argued, and Rambus' price tag should be irrelevant.
"Rambus is this nice, fast, sexy device. You want performance, you've got to pay for it. There is no free lunch," Tabrizi said.
Memories account for 5 to 7 percent of a PC's cost these days, Kanadjian said, and panelists believe PC OEMs are willing to see that inch up to near 10 percent for Rambus. "The OEM criteria is to have the Rambus memory fit within the budget they've allocated," Kanadjian said.
Panelists' belief was that rather than compete with Rambus, the PC133 architecture will be relegated to the bottom of the sub-$1,000 PC zone, "a natural evolution for the really low end," Tabrizi said.
But in the end, whether Rambus can carry a premium depends largely on demand. "If the supply exceeds the demand, the market will set the price," Kanadjian said. "It [Rambus] is a commodity part, and it will be a commodity part."
Potential problems with royalties, packaging and testability all were dismissed by panelists, who said the royalties aren't causing concern and the infrastructure will be in place for Rambus DRAMs to hit the PC market. Tate of Rambus said his goal, admittedly "aggressive," was to have RDRAM match SDRAM for testability, packaging and PC-board cost by the end of 2000.
One question that arose was whether Rambus' strategy might strand its memories at the high end, unable to decrease prices enough to become attractive for mainstream PCs, and unable to attract the mainstream volumes that would help drive prices down.
Tate said that money from high-end PCs — which he said account for 20 percent of the PC market — should suffice to fund engineering improvements to drive down costs, which in turn would help Rambus find eventual acceptance in mainstream PCs. And the high-end demand really exists, he said: "We've got design wins already that require Rambus."
Other suppliers on the panel were convinced that Rambus would migrate down the PC price chain, just as other high-end features have done. "Demand creation is not foreign to us," Kanadjian said, noting that advancing DRAM densities and technologies tend to find applications to drive volume.
In any event, the DRAM suppliers claimed they are prepared for a Rambus rollout beginning late this year. Micron said Monday (June 7) that it has delivered RDRAM samples to Rambus and to Intel Corp., and Samsung and Hyundai each claimed to have completed Intel qualification for their parts.
Micron's Mailloux declined to give ramping time frames for Micron's parts. Samsung expects to begin production deliveries in September for its 128- and 144-Mbit parts.
Hyundai, which will market both LG Semicon's and its own Rambus DRAMs, expects to sample its 128-Mbit part in the third quarter and its 256-Mbit part by year's end.
"Production of 256-Meg devices depends on how quickly we ramp our 0.18-micron [process]," said Hyundai's Tabrizi. |
