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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Jackson who wrote (72350)	9/19/1999 3:35:00 PM
From: steve harris	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572942

Bill, SEC filings dug up on THE Register, theregister.co.uk "In an AMENDMENT NO. 1 TO SEMICONDUCTOR TECHNOLOGY LICENSE AGREEMENT is the following agreement: "Intel will use its continuing best efforts in marketing, public relations, and engineering to make the Rambus-D DRAM the primary DRAM for PC main memory applications through December 31, 2002; and (b)Intel will communicate to the top (10) DRAM manufacturers, Intel's intention to support the Rambus-D Interface Technology in its integrated circuits for low end workstation, performance desktop, and basic PC platforms." "But there's more. In the same section is the following statement: "In January 1997 the Company granted a warrant to Intel Corporation for the purchase of 1,000,000 shares of Rambus common stock at an exercise price of $10.00 per share. The warrant will become exercisable only upon the achievement of certain milestones by Intel, which will result in a charge to the statement of operations at the time of achievement of the milestones based on the fair value of the warrant." That deal is now worth between $80 million and $100 million, a sizeable carrot which is worth a lot to Intel's bottom line." Definately a monetary interest I would think. Follow the money.............. steve ps: theregister.co.uk Wish AMD had $20million to buy OEM's "interests"

To: Bill Jackson who wrote (72350)	9/19/1999 4:59:00 PM
From: Elmer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572942

Re: "Elmer, In theory rambus does work and the prototypes worked and there was a need for faster memory to merely keep up with the CPU speeds...so Intel took a calculated risk that it would all mesh when the time came. " Calculated risk? I don't think so, unless you consider a fallback to BX/100MHz FSB an acceptable safety plan. It only makes sense when you understand that Intel did not fully anticipate the performance boost Athlon would offer. If they did, they would have seen the need for 133MHz SDRAM as a backup plan. The MTH approach doesn't cut it. I don't buy the theory of executives holding Rambus options as the reason for "damn the torpedos, full speed ahead with rambus". I just think Intel was caught napping by Athlon and didn't see how it would affect the big picture, including the need for memory bandwidth, therefore the need for a viable backup plan for a high risk architecture like Rambus. May we live in interesting times. EP