6/25/99 - DRAM suppliers differ on Rambus production plans
Jun. 25, 1999 (Electronic Buyers News - CMP via COMTEX) -- Tokyo- The launch date for Direct Rambus DRAM is fast approaching, but several memory-chip suppliers now say it will be next year before they devote more than token manufacturing resources to the high-speed technology.
The delay of Intel Corp."s Camino core-logic chipset until September has left an air of uncertainty surrounding the introduction of Direct RDRAM. And while most chip makers expect the architecture to dominate the memory market in the future, the pace at which it will do so has become difficult to predict.
Prior to the Camino delay, industry pundits projected that the equivalent of as many as 200 million 64-Mbit Direct RDRAM chips would ship this year-about 10% of all DRAM bit sales. Post-delay estimates are fluid, but lie in the range of 60 million 64-Mbit equivalents, said Mark Ellsberry, vice president of marketing for the semiconductor division of Hyundai Electronics America, the San Jose-based subsidiary of Hyundai Electronics Industries Co. Ltd. And even this estimate is too high, several analysts say.
Having earlier confirmed that they will reduce their exposure to the PC market by varying degrees, Hitachi Ltd. and Mitsubishi Electric Corp. now say it will be next year before they begin to manufacture Direct RDRAM in earnest.
"We are developing Rambus and maybe early next year we will be sampling," said Hideo Inayoshi, deputy general manager of the Strategic Business Planning Division of Hitachi"s Semiconductor & Integrated Circuits unit, in Tokyo. "We have a Camino [chipset] and are doing evaluation now. It still needs some more work."
Fujitsu Ltd., meanwhile, which is in the midst of a significant retrenchment from the PC market, has no immediate plans to build Rambus parts.
"We are very much reluctant at this point," said Ryusuke Hoshikawa, executive vice president of Fujitsu"s Semiconductor Group and chairman of San Jose-based Fujitsu Microelectronics Inc. "We don"t have activity to develop [Rambus chips]. The schedule is slipping and slipping, and we are very much doubtful about the cost."
Even staunch Rambus supporters such as NEC Corp. say they are taking a cautious approach to the technology, biding their time to make sure ample core-logic chipset support exists before committing to Rambus wholesale.
"We are now integrating Rambus gradually," said Keiichi Shimakura, associate senior vice president of NEC, in an interview with EBN. "Timing is a very crucial matter for us."
Despite Intel"s repeated assurances that the Camino will be released in September- in two versions that will support all Rambus speeds-DRAM suppliers said uncertainty still surrounds the launch.
"We will start production about the first quarter of 2000, but maybe the schedule will be delayed because the forecast from the Intel [chipset] side has become a little ambiguous," said Koichi Nagasawa, a vice president and director at Mitsubishi, and group president of the company"s semiconductor business. "My guess ... is that Intel is waiting on chipset delivery until the [Direct RDRAM] supply is enough for the market. If it"s not enough, Intel would have a lot of inventory."
A spokesman for Intel, Santa Clara, Calif., said the company has not backed off from its revised launch plans. "I can reiterate to you that we will introduce the Intel 820 [Camino] chipset, and that it will enable the RDRAM in Q3," the spokesman said. "We"re on schedule to do so."
Nevertheless, the Camino delay-coupled with Intel"s more recent decision to push out the launch of its high-performance Coppermine processor to November-has memory vendors fearing that they may be the ones left holding inventory. Better to wait for Intel to roll out a new platform consisting of the Camino and Coppermine before committing to Direct RDRAM altogether, they say.
"We"re trying to determine exactly what"s going on," said Jan du Preez, vice president of memory product for Infineon Technologies AG in Cupertino, Calif. "We"re getting very conflicting information coming from the companies that own the [Rambus] technology and from our customers."
With several vendors sitting on the fence, NEC, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., and Toshiba Corp. each expect to manufacture at least 1 million Direct RDRAM chips per month by the end of the year. NEC, for example, plans to produce 200,000 Rambus devices per month in September, ramping up to 2 million per month by March 2000.
Micron Technology Inc., Boise, Idaho, would not comment on production levels, but Infineon said it expects to make about 2 million to 3 million Rambus devices in 1999. LG Semicon could not be reached for comment, while Hyundai handed out the most aggressive projections, saying it would produce as many as 10 million Direct RDRAM chips this year.
Even among the most progressive Rambus supporters, however, yields remain an issue. A number of suppliers expect 30% or more of their fourth-quarter Direct RDRAM yields to be in the 600-MHz range, the lowest and least popular speed grade in the Rambus performance spectrum.
Samsung is widely considered to have among the best Rambus yields in the industry. Y.W. Lee, president and chief executive of the company"s semiconductor division, said Samsung will strive to meet customer demand for 700- and 800-MHz Direct RDRAM. "Our customers are not interested in a 600-MHz Rambus," he said.
But while Lee asserted that the majority of Samsung"s Rambus parts will be above 700 MHz in 1999, he still believes it will be about six months before yields of the optimum 800-MHz speed grade "reach acceptable levels." NEC and Toshiba confirmed similar production-yield curves, with most other suppliers falling in somewhere behind.
Of all the companies hoping to exploit Rambus technology, Toshiba appears to have the best seat in the house, regardless of yields or Intel"s roadmap.
The first company to sign a Rambus license, Toshiba plans to supply Sony Corp. with Direct RDRAM chips for the Sony PlayStation 2, which will be released in Japan late this year. Unlike the more discerning PC market, Sony has said it would use 600-MHz chips in its game console, giving Toshiba a ready source for down-binned memory parts, according to Yoshihide Fujii, general manager of the Strategic Planning Division of Toshiba"s semiconductor unit.
Such a customer gives Toshiba a big leg up over memory companies supplying Direct Rambus for PCs, where only 700- and 800-MHz versions are desired. Toshiba"s Direct RDRAM chips are custom-designed for the PlayStation 2, so they can"t be sold on the merchant market. However, the experience Toshiba gains in building the custom memory devices for Sony could give the company a head start in adapting the technology to make other versions of Direct RDRAM, Fujii noted.
Each Sony PlayStation 2 will require two 128-Mbit Direct RDRAM chips. Toshiba will start shipping production quantities of the custom Sony chip around October, Fujii said.
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By: Andrew MacLellan and Jack Robertson
Copyright 1999 CMP Media Inc.
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