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

To: grok who wrote (31781)	10/7/1999 7:32:00 PM
From: pompsander	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

KZNERD...what is your take on the SUNW news?

To: grok who wrote (31781)	10/7/1999 7:49:00 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 93625

KZNerd, at MPF I had a chance to talk to Bert McComas. Despite my previous impressions of the guy, I find him to be a very intelligent man who is not easily swayed by popular opinion, either for or against Rambus. (By the way, the guy talks a mile a minute. It was kind of tough to keep up with him at times.) He and I saw eye-to-eye on a lot of issues, such as RDRAM's benefits and weaknesses, as well as DDR's weaknesses and requirements for its success. A couple of points he mentioned that were interesting to me: - DDR's success hinges on PC133's acceptance in the marketplace. I asked him whether Intel's upcoming support for PC133 will help DDR, and he said yes. - DDR-II is not going to enter the marketplace until at least 18 months from now. The designs are still being defined, and even once they're defined, it will take quite a while for first silicon to appear. (I also wonder how tough DDR-II will be to implement, compared with parallel RDRAM channels, since DDR-II jacks up the common clock to 200 MHz.) I'll probably continue some e-mail correspondence with Bert McComas for a while. If any detail pops up that gets lost in the religious war, I'm sure he'll pick up on it. Tenchusatsu

To: grok who wrote (31781)	10/7/1999 7:51:00 PM
From: TST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Explain to me KZ why it is to Intel's strategic advantage to push a bum technology to the tune of billions of dollars with only marginal advantages? Also, prove to me that the current delay is due to an intrinsic Rambus technology failure & not a chipset motherboard failure for example, or some other non-rambus related issue. Finally, why did you own Rambus a month ago & not now. I think you had high hopes for profit & are now pissed. If so, I understand & don't blame you for investing elsewhere, a very prudent move. Just doesn't convince me that Rambus & Intel don't know what their doing or what they have.

To: grok who wrote (31781)	10/7/1999 8:47:00 PM
From: John Stichnoth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

KZ--After I supported your previous post, please don't go unbalanced on me. You said [bold added], An apples-to-apples comparison would be to compare it to PC133 with a chip set with 133MHz FSB. And before those apps demanding bandwidth appear DDR200 and DDR266 will appear in full production and provide more bandwidth (or at least equal bandwidth to Rambus). Following that DDR-II going above 400 MHz will appear. All of this will occur in the not distant future as VIA perfects their chip set and other vendors come on stream. Actually right now is the best time for Rambus performance and it will get worse relative in the future. Within 6 months I predict that "Rambus performance penalty" will enter the language just like Rambus die size penalty has. At that point it will be obvious to everyone that for PCs Rambus has higher cost, lower performance, and lower reliability. The question in each of your points, of course, is, WHEN?!! I don't mean to be too flippant on this, but we don't know when any of these will be successfully commercialized. We can at least agree on that, can't we? A race is in progress, both among the competing approaches and probably a terminal date by which none of the presently known competitors will be useful. At least implicit in your post is your acknowledgement that PC133 is a dead end. Thank you for that. As generations of DDR evolve, don't you expect that DRDR will evolve, also? There is a huge question surrounding when rdram will work with the 820 chipset. A protracted delay will substantially erode the opportunity to dominate desktops. There is no question that it is the method of choice in current graphics-intensive hardware. Best, JS

To: grok who wrote (31781)	10/8/1999 4:21:00 AM
From: John Walliker	Respond to of 93625

KZNerd, An apples-to-apples comparison would be to compare it to PC133 with a chip set with 133MHz FSB. And before those apps demanding bandwidth appear DDR200 and DDR266 will appear in full production and provide more bandwidth (or at least equal bandwidth to Rambus). Following that DDR-II going above 400 MHz will appear. All of this will occur in the not distant future as VIA perfects their chip set and other vendors come on stream. Don't forget that there may also be significant problems with DDR at 400 MHz and above, in terms of heat dissipation, signal integrity and radio frequency emissions. Perhaps Intel have realised this. John