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

To: Don Green who wrote (37757)	3/3/2000 1:54:00 PM
From: Orion	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Don This link posted on Yahoo, (a link to the Fool Board), give some excerpts of a article of Nikei Electronics. I believe that you are a subscriber of this newspaper, could you find and post the whole article. Some people express their view on Rambus patents, saying to sum up that they would be able to work around. Thanks in advance Orion Did you see the Nikkei Electronics article on the Hitachi lawsuit? I found out about it here boards.fool.com "Jacqi, I have seen a translation of the article. It is from: Nikkei Electronics 2000.2.28 (no.764) page 57-64 Copyright precludes posting the article, but a few excerpts are attached below. The tone of the report matches the tone of the paraphrases that I was given earlier. The entire article is most enlightening, and does include timetables, patent charts and a legal interview. The quality of the reporting and explanation of the technical background is astounding! It shames the English sources that we are accustomed to reading. I suspect that a subscription is in my future. -------------------------------------------------- Features Intellectual Property Rights Where to next? The threat of the Rambus patent suit Will all next generation DRAM conflict? The Japan DRAM industry is in a tumult as Rambus Inc. of the US sues Hitachi Manufacturing Labs for patent infringement. ?When was this basic patent established?? Is there a chance that synchronous DRAM will fall? DRAM with DDR mode, for which there are high expectations as next generation memory, also conflicts. Many DRAM engineers have analyzed the contents the patents, and have judged that, ?It is nearly impossible to avoid all aspects of it.? * Perhaps the legal representatives of Hitachi Manufacturing Labs did not realize the importance of the matter, but the delay in response was the cause for the development of the suit. * All of the semiconductor manufacturers have been expecting to begin use of DDR technology for the next generation DRAM interface. * If Rambus Inc. wins the suit, ?It will be equivalent to not being able to make anything,? says (a certain memory manufacturer). * An engineer who has closely examined the patents is worried. ?Even if we can work around some of the patents, it will be rather difficult to prove innocence on all fronts.? They should have been waving the white flag before the suit was filed. * The old clich‚ is to search in Europe For monitoring submarine patents, the clich‚ means to investigate the application conditions in Japan and Europe. * Actually, (several semiconductor engineers say that) ?We only looked at Japan and the US. It was careless.? * If only we thought about the system itself This kind of carelessness was one factor that caused the current situation to arise. * Many engineers have said ?They had that much technology together in 1990. If we had seen the patent, inevitably we would have recognized the foresight of Rambus Inc.? * Will DDR mode DRAM be a black hole? * Conflict with both memory and controllers * Actually, many DRAM engineers appear to recognize that ?There is no way to avoid this patent.? Concern about conflict with DLL circuits * (A DRAM manufacturer engineer says,) ?Until the patent problem is resolved, we must not recklessly focus on promotion activities.? The reason that the DLL circuit is mounted in the DRAM with DDR mode is to heighten the precision of the input/output timing. The purpose is to make the set up time and hold time shorter. This circuit is indispensable even for clock frequencies of 133 MHz. *** Byline Naoki Asami and Masanori Arai"