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

To: The Prophet who wrote (32257)	10/17/1999 5:08:00 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

Prophet, you have three questions here, and I'll try answering each one separately: <Do you know whether Rambus stands to be impacted by the movement towards devices using flash memory?> Flash is booming because of the growing popularity of hand-held devices, from cell phones (which are extremely popular in Korea and Japan) to digital cameras to those hot new portable MP3 players. But that's a different market segment than those which Rambus seeks to penetrate. Right now, Rambus is looking to go into all segments of PCs, from desktops to mobile to servers. Rambus is also looking to go into set-top boxes like game consoles (Sony Playstation and Nintendo) and maybe even Web-only boxes. There are many differences, although there may be some overlap (i.e. hand-helds connecting up to set-tops). But as of now, I don't know of any plans for Rambus to make it into hand-helds. <For example, will flash memory ever use any of RMBS' technology?> I guess they could, but I can't imagine why flash memory would ever need the high bandwidth that Rambus provides. Maybe in the near future flash memory will be able to hold DVD-quality movies. By then the bandwidth of Rambus will be needed. Until then ... oh well. <Also, if computers get "dumbed down" at all because the internet becomes the network, does this mean computers will require less RDRAM?> If that ever happens, then indeed computers may require "less RDRAM." Of course, the phrase "less RDRAM" is kind of an oxymoron, since what that means is actually a slowdown in the growth of memory capacities. In other words, it's not like tomorrow's PCs will have less memory than today's. Rather, they'll probably have the same amount as today's, but by then, the memory will cost less because higher memory densities will allow the same amount of memory to be held in fewer chips. For example, today's sweet spot of memory capacity is 64 MB, and assume that tomorrow's "dumbed down" computers will also have 64 MB. Currently, memory density is 128 Mbit (16 MB), meaning you need four DRAM chips to represent 64 MB. But in the future, when memory densities move to 256 Mbit, you'll need only two DRAM chips to represent 64 MB, and this will cost less than four 128 Mbit DRAM chips. And so on with 512 Mbit and 1 Gbit. So in other words, future computers won't necessarily require less RDRAM. They'll just require fewer RDRAM chips, but each chip will be more densely packed anyway. Tenchusatsu