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

To: dumbmoney who wrote (30735)	9/26/1999 10:44:00 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

<I really wonder if Intel did full system-level performance simulations. Heck, they had to.> Of course they did. Unfortunately, some of the top-level decisions have to be made very early on, including Rambus support. It can get quite tough trying to reconcile theory with real-world performance when you're trying to predict the future. <Maybe they ran the sims, the results were ho-hum, but they convinced themselves that future code, maybe using the MMX2 prefetch instructions, would benefit somehow.> History is on Intel's side. Remember how AGP was deemed unnecessary, yet another standard pushed by the 800 lb. gorilla on the poor industry? That was two years ago. I don't think anyone today is going to go back to PCI for their 3D graphics. Of course, it took a year and a half before AGP cards started to shine over PCI. Perhaps it will take another year and a half before RDRAM truly shines over the alternatives. The only difference now is that there are no doubt many more execution headaches with bringing up RDRAM compared to AGP. And that, I suppose, is what is turning many people away from RDRAM. Tenchusatsu

To: dumbmoney who wrote (30735)	9/26/1999 11:18:00 PM
From: grok	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

RE: <I really wonder if Intel did full system-level performance simulations. Heck, they had to. I mean, you don't make a multi-billion$ decision based on some foils, right?> Of course, when they made the decision, late 1996, Direct Rdram wasn't even defined. That took something like another 9 months or so. But the decision had been made and the contract signed and all the press conferences held so it has been a continuous process of trying the justify the decision ever since. The big decision, which doesn't seem to get much attention, was when they decided to go bare with Camino, ie, not offer Camino with Sdram as well as Rdram. This was the really dumb decision. Maybe at that time their simulations had already told them that Rdram was a turkey so they didn't want to offer the Sdram choice to the market since they knew everyone would take it.