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

To: Ian Anderson who wrote (47447)	7/18/2000 2:48:24 PM
From: jim kelley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Yes, it is yet another FUD attack. Rambus has said that it would license DDR and SDRAM and has in fact already licensed at least Toshiba and Hitachi. So, I do not think Rambus is trying to hold DDR back. So Rambus would license Intel as well. DDR just has a lot problems and a short lifespan as PC desk top memory. However, if Intel were to push DDR at the expense of RDRAM it would perhaps miss its incentive objectives under the contract and lose its warrants and the possibility of a royalty free license. Everything is negotiable when you are in command of 80% of the PC market. The Intel licnese with VIA to permit DDR is classic Intel marketing. After all VIA has limited engineering resources. They can all work on the Intel support and drop AMD. <VBG> :)

To: Ian Anderson who wrote (47447)	7/18/2000 3:01:52 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

From techweb.com Two obscure clauses in Intel's 1997 licensing pact with Rambus let the Mountain View, Calif., memory design company terminate its agreement with Intel if it introduces chip sets with DDR capabilities supporting memories other than the Direct Rambus DRAM from 2000 to 2002. Rambus can void the license if "Intel communicates to any of the then current top 10 DRAM manufacturers that Intel has plans to support, as the primary DRAM for PC main memory applications for the years 2000, 2001, and 2002, any new interface other than the (Direct) Rambus Interface," according to a clause in the 1997 agreement. The license can also be canceled if "Intel does not represent [to Rambus] that the (Direct) Rambus DRAM will be the primary DRAM for PC main memory applications for the years 2000, 2001, and 2002," the pact said. An Intel DDR chip set would fall under the "new interface" ban that targets any "DRAM interface which provides greater than 1 Gigabyte/second bandwidth." There is a now unlikely DDR escape hatch for Intel in the 1997 agreement -- if at any time before 2003 "the cost of the (Direct) Rambus DRAM is within 5 percent of the cost of 100-MHz 4-megabit-by-16 SDRAM manufactured on the identical process." With production costs of Direct RDRAM chips now twice as much as costs for SDRAMs, the escape clause allowing Intel DDR chip sets is far from becoming effective. The clauses -- 9.2(b)(iii and iv) -- are contained in Rambus' initial stock registration statement S-1 Amendment 4 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 29, 1997. Seems like a rather precise citation for a "rumour", but with all the official BS police around here, dedicated to keeping the BS in RMBS, who can say? Anyway, it doesn't seem to bar Intel from producing a DDR chipset, it just voids the agreement if Intel does. To my jaundiced eye, this would make producing a DDR chipset a winning proposition for Intel, but there's no indication that's going to happen any time soon. Cheers, Dan.