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

To: IceShark who wrote (28403)	9/1/1999 11:26:00 PM
From: Wyätt Gwyön	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

As the Street sees it> Intel to Back Alternative to Rambus Chips By Eileen Kinsella Staff Reporter 9/1/99 9:08 PM ET Ending months of speculation, Intel (INTC:Nasdaq) embraced a low-cost alternative to Rambus-based (RMBS:Nasdaq) memory chips. Intel said at the Intel Developers Forum in Palm Springs, Calif., late Wednesday that it will support PC133 SDRAMs in the first half of next year. The PC133 is a memory chip seen as a stopgap measure to chips using Rambus designs. Some companies have been critical of delays and high costs of Rambus chips. Intel's announcement will make it easy for Rambus critics to embrace an alternative while still working with chipsets made by Intel. Intel is facing growing competition in memory chipsets, or devices that connect a computer's memory to its processor. By the time Intel's chipsets come out, they will be six months behind competitor Via Technology, a Taiwan-based company that has PC133 chipsets on the market now. Rambus isn't likely to penetrate the low-priced PC market until 2002, according to data from Intel. Many in the semiconductor industry have said Rambus can't dominate the industry without penetrating the budget PC sector. Intel emphasized it isn't abandoning Rambus. It is still planning on producing parts for low-budget PCs next year, and is hoping that market will develop. "Rambus DRAM still provides a much more capable platform," Intel spokesman Pete MacWilliams said. Until now, Intel has been adamant that it would support only Rambus in its attempt to move the memory industry to the costly but fast design. But only recently has it realized that the industry is moving regardless toward PC133 SDRAM, which is made by Micron Technology (MU:NYSE) and Korea's Samsung. "A key part of the decision," said MacWilliams, "is that we're finding that PC133 just happens. It is not a lot of work or cost for DRAM vendors." That wasn't the case when Intel last evaluated the technology in the first half of 1998. MacWilliams told TheStreet.com that Intel has since been evaluating another Rambus alternative, double data rate DRAM, but doesn't plan to support it. But in a press conference later, MacWilliams said he would not rule it out. The launch of Intel's Rambus-based chipsets is scheduled for Sept. 27. Rambus closed down 1 3/4 at 95 3/4 and Intel closed up 1 1/4 at 83 7/16. -- Marcy Burstiner Major Indices INDEX CHANGE % VALUE YR TO DATE Dow 108.60 +1% 10,937.88 +19.1% S&P 500 10.65 +0.8% 1331.06 +8.3% Nasdaq 11.46 +0.4% 2750.81 +25.4% Russell 2000 3.16 +0.7% 430.99 +2.1% TSC Internet 2.81 -0.5% 563.14 +38.6% BOND CHANGE PRICE YIELD 30-Year Treasury 6/32 100 18/32 6.084% © 1999 TheStreet.com, All Rights Reserved.

To: IceShark who wrote (28403)	9/1/1999 11:38:00 PM
From: Dave B	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Spin is an interesting beast. On the one hand you could say that PC-133 is a rejection (or at least a retardation) of RDRAM, and many would believe that. On the other hand, you could spin it as: Intel was going to be supporting SDRAM for another 3 years anyway (while RDRAM came down the cost curve and penetrated the lower and lower end PC segments), and whether it's PC-100 or PC-133, it doesn't much matter. And many would believe that. Personally, I believe PC-133 support only happened because of Via's attack on their chipset market. If Via hadn't supported PC-133, then Intel would have told the OEM's that the choices were PC-100 or RDRAM, as they have been doing until a month ago or so. Which tells me that PC-133 isn't a RDRAM replacement, it's a PC-100 replacement so that Intel can protect its turf. Will PC-133 slow down RDRAM acceptance? Maybe a hair, but I'll bet that the much bigger factor is simply the slower RDRAM production ramp than originally anticipated. We can argue about the relative performance of SDRAM and DRDRAM, but more important is the perception of performance. And from what I've seen on the Dell, Compaq, and Intel sites, these companies are representing the performance improvements of RDRAM at an even higher level than most of the "Rambus-bulls" could have hoped for. Read the Intel report published today, or the Compaq report represented a few posts back, and you'll see that they're not claiming 10%, 20%, or 30% improvements -- they're making claims of much larger performance improvements. And most people who read these reports aren't going to know whether they're really valid or not, they'll just believe them. It'll get even better when the Dell, Compaq, and CompUSA sales people get in front of the customer and ask them whether they want memory that runs at 133Mhz, or memory that runs at 800Mhz (I know, I know, it's not accurate, but that's how it's going to be presented). It's not going to matter whether they compare 800Mhz to 133Mhz or 100Mhz, the comparison is still going to look very lopsided. The bottom line is that PC-133 is not going to make DRDRAM go away, it's going to make PC-100 SDRAM go away. JMO, Dave