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

To: Dan3 who wrote (28754)	9/6/1999 1:23:00 AM
From: kash johal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

Dan3, Re:"You aren't paying attention - to my posts or to the information available on Rambus. I've posted a number of times that I'm holding Rambus puts and why it is that I'm doing so. It wouldn't make sense for me to be presenting this point of view and then not demonstrate my conviction by shorting the stock. As to who is posting facts, unclewest (who is, I believe, posting only what he sincerely believes to be the best take on the present status of rambus) has an argument that boils down to: Intel is pushing rambus hard, and they've had considerable success at getting others to go along with them. I have been posting a number of links and direct inductions, including the basis for the inductions, that boil down to: the performance of rambus has been a major disappointment, the performance of non-rambus ram has proven surprisingly extendable, and that rambus is more costly and difficult to produce than was expected. Unclewest thinks that, with Intel's backing, the performance will be good enough. I think that due to the unexpected performance of Athlon and the competitive vigor of VIA, Intel is going to have no choice but to reduce its support for Rambus and instead move to PCXXX and DDR." Dan I tend to agree with your analysis but reach a 180 degree different conclusion. IMHO if Athlon was same or lower performance than coppermine then Intel would have less use for Rambus. Now Athlon beats even the Xeon pretty much across the board. So I see Intel needing Rambus to show some benchmarks where it is faster than Athlon and they will use these obscure benchmarks to trumpet Coppermine performance (similar to Apples campaign vs Pentium II). In this environment I see Intel pushing Rambus even harder, JMHO. In the short term this should enable Rambus to beat estimates and for the stock to rocket. regards, Kash

To: Dan3 who wrote (28754)	9/6/1999 5:54:00 AM
From: unclewest	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

quoteserver.dogpile.com clip... The next-generation version, the EV-7 (or 21364), is scheduled to tape out in December. It's intended to support clock speeds in excess of 1 GHz and will include 1.5 Mbytes of integrated L2 cache, a 6-Gbyte/ second direct Rambus memory controller, a 3-Gbyte/s I/O interface and a direct processor-to-processor interface. The package is designed to support large-scale multiprocessing and high-availability systems. Even with Alpha and Ultrasparc in the picture, Intel believes it has licked the one paper spec that has kept it from pushing to the front of the pack: floating-point performance. Merced will deliver 6 Gflops of single-precision floating-point and 3 Gflops double precision. unclewest

To: Dan3 who wrote (28754)	9/6/1999 6:15:00 AM
From: unclewest	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

dan, this is a threat to intel? i don't think so. this is not how to compete with intel! i don't think amd is quite the threat you think it is. if i recall correctly(i am on vacation and did not bring all my notes...maybe someone can help me here)as i recall we had a similar announcement by another of the athlon consortium last week. amd rushed their products to market to upstage intel without adequate testing...or could it be that their labs are just not as good as intel's? either way, starting out your new world class product line with a recall sounds like a devastating event to me. an absolute catastrophe...you can be sure intel will capitalize on this. amd may have just committed suicide. can you imagine buying an athlon computer that won't start...then taking it back...and being told we hope to be able to fix it soon. pathetic. how long would it take you to demand "intel inside"? Micro-Star to Recall Motherboards for AMD's Athlon Chips August 30, 1999 (TOKYO) -- Taiwan's Micron-Star International Co., Ltd. (MSI) will recall its motherboards for U.S.-based Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD)'s Athlon microprocessors. A letter dated Aug. 21, to personal computer makers, which was cosigned by AMD and MSI, said that they found some of the motherboards equipped with AMD's chipsets lack compatibility and cannot fulfill PC cold starts. Only motherboards with the MS-6167 model are now being marketed, according to MSI. MSI will join with AMD to find solutions to the problems. They will soon start shipping modified motherboards. The modifications will be done by updating part of BIOS and replacing components, without replacing the chipsets. Also, MSI said it will replace MS-6167 motherboards, which have already been shipped, with modified ones. Users can distinguish between flawed motherboards and modified ones by the shape of a sticker that reads "for Japanese market" on each motherboard package. The former units have a star shape seal and the later units feature a round one. PC retailers that have shipped products with the Athlon system will soon begin exchanges. AMD hasn't disclosed details about the chipset-related problems. Unlike the contents of the cosigned letter to the PC makers, AMD's PR unit said that its chipsets have no defects, but there is a problem with incompatibility among components installed on the motherboards. Also, MSI didn't arrange the components correctly on the motherboards and some mismanagement was evident, AMD said, underlining MSI's responsibility. MSI explained that the combination of a 600MHz Atholn chip and AMD's chipset (production version C1 or C2) has a high probability of encountering problems. AMD Japan Ltd. asked MSI and PC retailers to refrain from selling MS-6167 motherboards and products equipped with the motherboards until the modified ones are introduced. Replacement work will be done by MSI, and AMD will share the replacement costs (US$8 a board). Due to the problems of incompatibility among some components installed on the motherboards, AMD implemented customer service that's regarded as epoch-making. That's because it proposed replacing all the Athlon motherboards with modified ones. (Nikkei Byte)