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Technology Stocks : Rambus (RMBS) - Eagle or Penguin -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pompsander who wrote (28100)	8/30/1999 11:40:00 AM
From: wily	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Sorry I don't have a link -- I grabbed this from the Micron thread: Micron tests Rambus pricing with samples at $45 Aug. 27, 1999 (Electronic Engineering Times - CMP via COMTEX) -- PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. - The first PCs using Direct Rambus memory technology are expected to debut here this week at the Intel Developer Forum. But lingering questions over the cost of using RDRAM may hinder the chips' full-scale deployment. Claiming Rambus prices will stay high for some time in a fragmenting memory market, Micron Technology Inc. will announce today that it is sampling both Direct Rambus and competing double-data-rate synchronous DRAM chips. Meanwhile, Rambus chief executive officer Geoff Tate said in an interview that the company is addressing issues on several fronts to cut Direct RDRAM costs to just a 10 percent premium over SDRAM by the end of next year. Current RDRAM prices are at least twice those of standard SDRAM. Jeff Mailloux, DRAM marketing manager for Micron, doesn't see RDRAM's premium over mainstream SDRAM falling below 50 percent anytime soon. Several factors are keeping upward pressure on prices, Mailloux said. RDRAM's die size is about 25 percent larger than SDRAM's, and RDRAM chips need more expensive packaging. Inadequate testers have also boosted overall production cost. "The biggest concern among customers is the cost," said Mailloux. "I don't realistically see how we can sell [RDRAM chips] for less than a 50 percent premium anytime soon." Tate of Rambus agreed that cost will be a big factor in the transition to RDRAM. "We are hearing about pretty significant Rambus price premiums," he said. "And negotiations between PC makers and DRAM companies have been intense." To whittle the premium, he said, RDRAM developers are working on reducing the die penalty to 10 percent. Further, he said, as memory vendors travel the production learning curve for the parts and as testers improve, RDRAM chips that run at full speed will become more plentiful. Packaging "is the most difficult area" facing Rambus, Tate said. Currently, a micro ball-grid array (BGA) package costs more than twice what a thin small-outline package does. "Many people believe that chip-scale packaging will move to the wafer level, with bumps created at the wafer-processing stage," he said. "We were part of a seminar on this topic in Tokyo recently, and the consensus was that wafer-scale packaging was the way to go" over the long term. In the meantime, Rambus and DRAM makers are investigating alternative chip-scale packaging technologies. NEC, Toshiba and Micron Technology have created packages that differ from the micro-BGA package licensed from Tessera Corp. Micron's packaging approach wire-bonds the die to a tiny printed-circuit board that uses a BGA package to mount on a proprietary module. "The lower packaging cost is significant in terms of materials, manufacturing and licensing [the Tessera technology]," said Mailloux. Only four vendors are now validated to produce 400-MHz RDRAM (double-data-rate capabilities push bandwidth to 800 Mbits/second/pin). Four more chip companies expect to receive validation soon. Only 30 to 40 percent of today's good dice test out at the full 400 MHz, said Tate. With experience, he expects that to improve next year, with a favorable impact on price. For now, Micron is sampling 128- and 144-Mbit RDRAM chips on a 0.18-micron process at $45 each in 1,000-unit quantities. Mailloux said high costs may lead some to consider alternatives like DDR DRAM, which the company is sampling in 64-Mbit densities. "Most of our initial interest for DDR chips is in servers," he said. "OEMs are concerned about the cost of Rambus where they will [use] gigabytes of memory." Micron has produced a dual-processor server motherboard using an in-house-developed chip set as a reference design for its DDR parts.

To: pompsander who wrote (28100)	8/30/1999 12:01:00 PM
From: grok	Respond to of 93625

RE: <The IDF is a good news/bad news story almost any way you want to read it. The bulls are happy about the Dell launch and the Intel support. The bears see any PC 133 support as a death blow to Rambus.> I'm thinking that IDF will be all good news for rambus. No way will Intel announce any significantly bad Rambus news during the Forum and since we are less than 24 hours away and they haven't yet preannounced it yet then I just don't think that there will be any. Instead I guess that they will just recommit to Rambus and show a bunch of benchmarks that show Rambus is faster. The benchmarks will likely be rigged by the way comparing the fastest drdrams on the latest technology against the slowest srams on older technology but the press will never understand that. Instead the sdram world will be standing there saying: "Shut up and deal."

To: pompsander who wrote (28100)	8/30/1999 2:33:00 PM
From: NHBob	Respond to of 93625

Pomp:Wild & Wooly Check this read from today's TheStreet TSC Options Forum): "Straddling Rambus It seems to me that Rambus' (RMBS:Nasdaq) impending "day of reckoning" presents an opportunity for a buy straddle -- purchasing both September 115 calls and September 80 puts, for example. The idea, of course, is that no matter how Intel (INTC:Nasdaq) leans, it will have an outsized impact on Rambus' share price. What do you think? -- Ari Nadin Ari, Before we go further, a straddle is when an investor buys or sells an equal number of puts and calls having the same strike price and expiration date. The trade you are asking about sounds more like a "strangle," which is a put and call at different strikes but the same expiration. In any case, we decided to go straight to the horse's mouth for the answer, and we rang up Randy Emer, a partner with Eclipse DPM and the primary market maker for Rambus options on the Chicago Board Options Exchange. In the middle of the trading day, he was able to juggle screaming orders and comment on this trade. Emer reminded us that Tuesday, Aug. 31, is D-Day for Rambus, as TheStreet.com detailed in a recent interview with the head of the chip-design concern. That's the day Intel is expected to signal a move either toward, or away from, Rambus' memory-chip designs. "Any sort of straddle strategy like this is a good one, especially in a worst-case or home-run scenario," Emer yelled over the din. At current prices, it might be cheaper to buy that September 80 put-110 call trade than something like a September 95 straddle trade. The first setup requires you to buy the out-of-the-money 80 put and 110 call, which cost about $2 and $3 ($200 and $300 per 100-option contract), respectively, while the second scenario costs about $8 and $8 per contract, or $16 ($1,600) for the whole trade. Think of the trade as an airplane: The September 95 straddle is the body and the original 80-110 trade are the wings. "You're putting up much more money -- roughly $1,600 for the guts of this trade, rather than for the wings," says Emer. Nevertheless, his contention is that the September 95 straddle "likely will be worth something two weeks from now, whereas the trade on the wings [the September 80 and 110 options] could collapse if Intel's announcement is a dud." In other words, if the stock doesn't move wildly in reaction, both the 80 put and the 110 call expire worthless. Also, Emer points out that from his perspective in the trading pit, "there have been as many sellers as buyers of September options. It leads me to believe there might not be as much of an impact on the stock price as people think. It might already be in the stock price," which by the way, has been trading around 96." so...there's a third play?: it dont go nowhere, the market's already discounted all possible news...so maybe we get a volatility implosion? nhbob