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

To: gnuman who wrote (29284)	9/11/1999 7:13:00 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

Hi Gene Parrott; A great, balanced article linked and extensively quoted here. I would post the whole thing, but I like to think I still have some respect for copyright laws. Don't read the quotes I give below, just click on the link and read the whole thing: techweb.com DRAM deadlock: Rambus vs. DDR The moves left a deep uncertainty in several quarters. For example, engineers at Compaq Computer Corp. confided they still believe Direct Rambus is the best technology for the long haul, yet they do not expect to ship consumer PCs using the memories in the next 12 months. ... "Rambus is stalled," said one Compaq engineer who asked to remain unnamed. ... "We used to have Rambus products on our road map but six months ago we took them off," said Dean Hayes, director of marketing at Via's U.S. office in Fremont, Calif. (i.e. Cyrix) ... He claimed three DRAM makers are sampling 128- and 256-Mbit DDR parts now and that seven would have samples by year's end. ... "Everything is changing rapidly," said Rhoden, claiming 133-MHz SDRAM would be the big winner in the fall sales season. "For the Christmas selling season we know both Direct Rambus and DDR missed the boat." ... A PC maker's choice of memory technology is increasingly driven by marketing, said Steven Przyblski, principal consultant at Verdande Group (San Jose). "The PC133 solution offers very little, in some cases no, performance improvement," he said. "Its only significant value is that it gives the marketing people something to use to argue that they have a leg up over the competition." ... Gelsinger admitted that the Rambus transition "has gotten more difficult with the collapse in pricing for SDRAMs." "DRAM makers are practically giving away 133-MHz parts with no price premium over PC100 devices, and that is forcing Intel to reevaluate its plans," said Jeff Mitchell, business development manager in Rambus Inc.'s PC division. ... prices of the Rambus modules were astronomical, with numbers quoted as high as $840 for an 800-MHz module in the case of one second-tier OEM. The additional cost of making an RDRAM is estimated by Intel to be from 20 to 30 percent higher than for SDRAM (one vendor said its cost adder was 50 percent). On the market, RDRAMs cost four to five times as much as SDRAMs. Intel's MacWilliams said the recent nosedive in the price of PC100 SDRAMs-albeit with a small bounceback over the past 10 days-has widened the gap between them and Rambus. "The DRAM vendors are losing lots of money on SDRAMs," MacWilliams said. "As prices go down they are less willing to track the same aggressive pricing with RDRAMs." ... Vendors are charging a stiff premium for RDRAMs running at 400 MHz, which deliver 800 Mbits/s by reading data from both the rising and falling edges of the clock. Estimates for the price of a 128-Mbyte RIMM vary considerably. Intel said such a module would cost about $200. A DIMM of similar density, populated with 64-Mbit PC100 SDRAMs, would be about $80. One small module maker in Taiwan said its 128-Mbyte RIMM sells for $840; Intel officials dismissed that price as an aberration. Hyundai Electronics America is currently selling 128-Mbyte RIMMs "in the high $300 to $400 range," said Farhad Tabrizi, the company's strategic memory marketing manager. That price should drop to $250 by the fourth quarter, at which time the 128-Mbyte PC133 DIMM will sell for about $100 to $125, Tabrizi said. The 100 percent premium will reflect the higher cost of the RDRAM package, the more expensive testers and the larger die size of the Rambus parts, he said. ... "What has happened is that the reference point-the price of the SDRAM-has changed. That unfortunate gap has made the Rambus premium look twice as large," he said. ... Sherry Garber, a senior vice president at Semico Research Corp. (Phoenix), said recent events have led her to question whether the Rambus architecture will ever really get off the ground. The cost of manufacturing remains too high, and the market is fast shifting toward commodity desktops, she said. That makes Rambus a niche market even into 2001. Garber said Semico's latest estimates call for 182.9 million Rambus memory units to ship next year, nearly all at the 128-Mbit density-or 6.2 percent of total DRAM units. In 2001, according to Semico, the ratio will increase to only 7.8 percent. By then the 256-Mbit generation will start to become a factor. "SDRAM manufacturers already are coming down the learning curve on 256-Mbit DRAMs for the server market, and Rambus won't have a 256-Mbit density part for quite some time" Garber said. "Can they be ready with a 256-Mbit RDRAM by 2002?" If Intel supports PC133 SDRAM, "it will have a big impact. That means the adoption of Rambus DRAM will be delayed by six to nine months," opening the door to "other high-speed memories such as DDR and NEC's Virtual Channel Memory to catch up," said Akira Minamikawa, senior analyst at IDC Japan. By the way, I'm going to be in the market for a new computer in about six months. I'm going to wait for a reasonably cheap Athlon. -- Carl