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

To: jim kelley who wrote (43416)	6/5/2000 10:12:00 AM
From: blake_paterson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Gateway's written response to RDRAM and DDR questions below. This was in follow-up to a sales - purchasing teleconf week before last. Their written statements are more sober and their numbers vary from what was said at the teleconf, as could be expected for a sales call. > -----Original Message----- > Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2000 > Subject: Gateway E-4400 Answers >> > Thank you for your time last week. I enjoyed talking to you ......regarding our E-4400 series computers.... > > I apologize that we did not have sufficient answers for you on the phone regarding the details of the new Rambus Technology. I trust that the following answers will show you the direction, commitments and position that Gateway has regarding the new Rambus Memory Technology... > Summary answers to your questions are at the end of this e-mail..... > My goal with this e-mail is to help you make an educated decision regarding Rambus Technology, and to win your confidence that Gateway is committed to providing the products and services that best meet your needs at a fair price.... > > Answers to questions regarding Rambus: > 1. What is Gateway's direction with regards to Rambus memory? > Gateway is committed to offering a wide variety of products including participating in the high performance desktop market. Today, that platform is the Rambus-enabled E-4400. While Rambus is confined to this space today, based upon Intel's roadmap, we feel that Rambus will become a larger percentage of our overall mix with the rollout of the next generation processors and chipsets being introduced later this year and next. For clients looking to buy a more mainstream product, we feel that the upcoming E-3400, based upon the 815 chipset, is a great choice. This platform gives you many of the same features that 820 provides, but utilizes PC133 SDRAM instead of the higher cost RDRAM. > 2. What is the industry direction with regards to Rambus memory > Up to this point, the lack of supply has created a high premium for RDRAM. This premium has delayed widespread industry adoption of RDRAM, but with more suppliers coming online, this premium should begin to come down. It is our belief, that the RDRAM premium will level out at around 25-50% above SDRAM by the end of the year. > 3. What are the performance gains with utilizing the 820 chip and the Rambus? > The performance gain utilizing Rambus on an 820 chipset can not be answered easily - it really depends. It depends upon the configuration of the machine (i.e. processor speed), and upon the applications you are running. Rambus Provides twice the memory bandwidth vs. PC-100, a requirement for the increased AGP bus speed and the CPU can take advantage of 33% more memory bandwidth due to the increase in bus speed. On the downside, RDRAM has a higher latency than SDRAM. Thus software with lots of random accesses to memory will actually run slower with RDRAM than with SDRAM. > 4. What is Gateway's direction on DDR? > We continue to monitor the changes within the industry including memory developments. At this point in time, we do not have any plans to launch a DDR-based E-Series managed PC. However, we will continue to watch this and make adjustments accordingly.....<eom> Your unbiased servant (ggg), BP