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

To: Scumbria who wrote (38261)	3/16/2000 6:51:00 PM
From: Don Green	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 93625

Rambus: a tale of deception posted 3:08pm EST Thu Mar 16 2000 NEWS Yesterday, Tom's Hardware posted a long article that highlights some shocking Rambus memory (RDRAM) facts that have been pieced together from a wide variety of sources. Among the findings are that Rambus memory is still 750% more expensive than PC133 SDRAM, and that PC133 SDRAM is capable of outperforming RDRAM in all applications save a single very specific benchmark. The article also points out that Dell Computer Corp. is providing false information to its customers, saying that SDRAM is an 8-bit memory technology when it is really a 64-bit memory technology. As well, Dell provides the misleading statement that RDRAM in its systems provides up to 1.6 Gbps transer rates. In actuality, Dell's mainstream RDRAM runs at 356 MHz, which provides a maximum of just over 1.4 Gbps transfer rates. ROB'S OPINION It's about time that someone pieced all of this information together. I'm certainly disturbed by the figures on Dell's website. If you read the article on Tom's Hardware, you would imagine that RDRAM is all doom and gloom. However, let's take a look at a few points. The slated successor to SDRAM, chosen by the DRAM companies, is DDR-SDRAM. However, there is no chipset shipping today that uses DDR SDRAM, and thus no motherboards, and there is no store I know of selling any DDR-SDRAM. So, DDR-SDRAM is essentially vaporware at the moment. RDRAM is available today, and ships in systems. That leaves us with a comparison between PC133 SDRAM and RDRAM. However, do we compare PC800 RDRAM or PC700 RDRAM? Also, what chipset is best with the PC133 SDRAM? Tom's Hardware proved that the 440BX chipset overclocked to support PC133 SDRAM beats all others easily. That is nice, but it is not easy to overclock your system bus by 33% in most situations, and no manufacturers ship products that way. Thus, Intel has painted us into a corner. 1 GHz Pentium III systems with RDRAM beat our 1 GHz AMD Athlon-based systems in a round of benchmarks by ZDNet. Unfortunately for Rambus, this is because of a weakness in the current Athlon processor (no L2 on-chip cache) and not because of the strength of RDRAM. Two of the five major DRAM companies have recently upped their production of RDRAM memory. Plans for DDR-SDRAM are unclear. However, Micron, the largest supplier of memory chips, still appears to be behind it, even after a US$500 million investment by Intel to promote production of RDRAM last year. NEC also plans to produce more RDRAM memory because of a bribe by Rambus. If, after the bribe, it makes financial sense I'd produce RDRAM too ... if only I had a fab in my basement. Beyond the simple production of RDRAM, which is obviously problematic right now, we have the Rambus patents to deal with. It is possible that Rambus patents are strong enough to force payment of licensing fees to Rambus even if DDR-SDRAM is used in systems. However, it doesn't appear that Rambus has played that card yet, at least to the extent to which it could. Rambus stock has shot up from $68 to almost $500 and is now dipping below $400. Rambus plans to do a 4-1 split in the next few months to keep the stock price in the friendly range for (often ignorant) investors. Dataquest, a large and respected researcher, has recently given the big thumbs up to Rambus. I question that judgement, unless Dataquest knows more about the RDRAM patents and its other statements are just a cover-up. If you've got the right patents in your corner, some would say you can't lose. ugeek.com