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

To: gnuman who wrote (81773)	6/20/2000 6:55:00 AM
From: Earlie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Gene: I've had a peak at some of the patent poop (but tons of work yet to do). It sure looks like a bunch of baloney to me. The patent items that RMBS suggests are being infringed, appear to have been covered largely through the "continuations", which were submitted well after the original claims. There are plenty of holes in this situation. Also, some industry experts who I have queried feel that it wouldn't take a great deal of effort to "work around" the claims in any event, although I don't have sufficient expertise to validate this theme. To me, it looks like a desperate effort to give the stock a final fling. It is becoming increasingly obvious that Rdram isn't going to conquer the memory market (and Intel can't afford more bullet holes in its shoes), hence the shift of focus. Basically, and as I've maintained all along, RDram is a joke. It isn't selling (just ask Dell) and everybody knows this. It is too expensive to build and it suffers from latency problems. I expect that over the next few weeks, we'll see the response from the industry. Behind the scenes, the shoulder-launched ordinance is being hauled out of storage and lubricated, believe me. Comments from the Wall Street dream machine that some of the big players will roll over and sign up are wishful thinking in my opinion. RMBS has burned some big bridges with this escapade. I'm concentrating on Intel's changing relationship with RMBS at the moment. Intel today is not the Intel of even a few years ago and IMHO, probably recognizes that it simply can't afford to arouse the combined ire of both the memory industry as well as its own big customers. I expect a very visible "distancing" to commence in the near term (a bit of this is already evident). Continuing sponsorship of RMBS isn't now likely to provide Intel with consequential future financial gains (doesn't look like Intel will be able to push out the required RMBS-compatible chip sets now, especially after this latest fiasco), and in any event, this would just exacerbate an already gritty relationship with box builders who now have choices other than Pentiums and Celerons. I am hearing that Intel's clients haven't been shy about making their less-than-positive feelings about the RMBS situation known to INTC. I am also endeavouring to ascertain the latest perspective of the memory majors. Publicly, they are not going to say too much (some have already taken big cheques from Intel to support RMBS development) nor are they going to provide ammo to the lawyers of the opposition. I do know that big-time energy is being expended on an examination of the RMBS patents. I'd bet on a back alley brawl rather than a roll-over. (g) Best, Earlie