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

To: Don Green who wrote (35640)	12/8/1999 7:54:00 PM
From: visionthing	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

From WORTH magazine--Winter bonus issue 1999-2000 The WORTH guide to the hottest high-tech products and the companies that make them Anybody who thinks the .coms are the only hot items in the world of technology hasn't been paying attention. High-tech advances are happening all over...Rambus, a company that doesn't make a thing but stands to reap millions from Sony Playstation 2, which uses Rambus's chip technology... Rambus MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA NASDAQ: RMBS RECENT PRICE; $79.19 Rambus is the only company profiled in this issue that manufactures absolutely nothing. Despite that fact, Rambus trades at 235 times its earnings. The reason: Rambus has developed a unique type of memory chip that works eight times faster than ordinary ones. The company doesn't actually make the chips but licenses the technology to more than 30 chip makers. Until recently, there were no computers that used the chips, and, even worse, no one knew when the chips would ship. That's why Rambus shares bounced around in 1999 from a high of $118 to a low of $52. But in November, Intel released its highly anticipated chip set that permits the use of Rambus chips. Though the company expects big things from Playstation2, which uses its chips, the real payoff will come should the entire personal-computer industry embrace the powerful technology. "Rambus has no costs," explains SG Cowen & Securities analyst Mark Grossman. "All they have to do is cash the checks."-NICK PACHETTI Chips Ahoy Most kids couldn't care less about the innards of video-game console. As long as the graphics are beyond belief and the joystick easy to handle, game enthusiasts are satisfied. But if you want to see Crash Bandicoot successfully spin in 3-D or watch a rim-shaking Scottie Pippen dunk, computer speed is essential. Sony's highly anticipated PLAYSTATION2, which hits the market in fall 2000, will pack that kind of heat. Sony promises an unparalleled gaming experience: When a character is standing outdoors ready to fight evil or play baseball, expect a random digital breeze to blow through his hair or sunlight to sparkle on a nearby lake. A lot of that heightened reality has to do with Rambus's DRAM chips, the dynamic random-access memory chips a computer uses to store information. While most processors and memory chips send data at 100 megabits per second, Rambus's unique architecture allows information to move at speeds of up to 800 megabits per second. For applications such as spreadsheets and word processors, the extra juice isn't needed. But for the action Sony has in store for the kiddies, high-speed data transfer is a must.- N.P. Also photograph of PLAYSTATION2. FWIW-VT