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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Earlie who wrote (76026)	2/16/2000 9:06:00 PM
From: Zeev Hed	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

I think that INtel is in RMBS not for the stock play, but for removing other elements in system from being speed bottle neck. You cannot sell premium devices operating at 800 MHz if every time you get to the memory, you drop to 200 MHz. INTC, IMHO, wants to make sure that the speed bottle neck is always the CPU, because that is where they get the huge margins. As nature works in that world, however, the premium devices at 100 MHz if five years ago do not even make the grade as slow devices, I would not be surprised to see 800 MHz become the speed standard for the low end, and RMBS participating there as well in due time. I doubt there is any legal inhibition for INTC to drop RMBS support tomorrow, the only thing they lose ( I believe a minimum of 20% of their CPU are RMBS enabled for a given period, maybe even as short as a quarter) is the ability to exercise their option on 10 MM shares at $10/share, if they want and if there is a danger for INTC to lose dominance in the CPU arena due to support of RMBS, they'll drop RMBS like a hot potato. Even at $200/share, that option is worth only some $2 Billion, much less than the risk of losing dominance in the CPU market. So, I doubt that INTC drive is the stock, the drive is, I believe, the current conviction of INTC's management that long term, only the RMBS approach removes most limitation to DRAM speed, and so far, other approaches including the one we mentioned before, are not real contenders. They are also thinking beyond the 1 GHz barrier down the road, where DDR will have additional problems. The problem of being a pure IP company is a much more real one, and that is one place where I see clouds on RMBS' horizons, if they used their commanding IP position to build a commanding position in the market place, fine, but otherwise, after this slew of patents expire in 10 to 20 years, what next? The most difficult thing to guarantee, is "innovation" and make that innovation commercial (believe me, I know that part, and furthermore, look at ENER, probably half a billion bucks of OPM and 30 years latter, not much to show for all that). But that is down the road, I think that RMBS is an interesting play for the next three to five years, and even then, I play it "carefully". Zeev