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To: Estephen who wrote (48151)	7/28/2000 10:25:49 AM
From: Estephen	Respond to of 93625

Oki, Rambus Sign License Accord on 2 Memory Standards (Update1) By Alan Patterson and Minoru Matsutani quote.bloomberg.com Mountain View, California, July 28 (Bloomberg) -- Rambus Inc. signed an accord under which Oki Electric Industry Co., agreed to pay royalties for patented Rambus technology it is already using to make chips. Oki, a Japanese telecommunications equipment maker, is the third company to sign such an agreement with Rambus this year, following Toshiba Corp. and Hitachi Ltd. Rambus declined to say how much it expects from the royalties. ``These important Rambus patents are necessary for current and future memory and logic products,'' said Masayoshi Ino, Oki Electric managing director. The Rambus agreement with Oki involves designs for synchronous dynamic random access memory, or SDRAM, and double data rate, or DDR, which Oki uses to make memory controllers and other semiconductors. Royalty rates for DDR-SDRAM and DDR controllers are greater than those for Rambus DRAM, a memory standard the Mountain View, California, chip-design company developed to increase processing speeds. Toshiba and Hitachi have agreed to pay Rambus licensing fees for its patented computer memory chip designs in agreements similar to that reached between Rambus and Oki today. Rambus sued Hitachi in January, accusing Japan's No. 1 electronics maker of violating Rambus patents. Hitachi has agreed to pay Rambus an undisclosed settlement fee as well as quarterly royalties. Standards Standoff For years, Intel Corp., the world's largest chipmaker, has endorsed Rambus as the only memory standard that will enable computers to do high-speed processing for digital consumer electronic equipment such as camcorders. Intel two days ago ended its exclusive endorsement of Rambus, when the company said it will support the SDRAM memory standard in addition to Rambus DRAM for its Pentium 4 processor. Intel said that it will make a chipset for its Pentium 4 processor supporting SDRAM. Chipsets are semiconductors which link a processor with other parts of a computer such as memory and the display. Intel yesterday said that it may make Pentium 4 chipsets which support DDR-DRAM chips as well. Intel did not disclose whether it will need to sign a license with Rambus for the SDRAM chipset it plans to produce next year. Rambus DRAM chips have been expensive to make and currently represent about 5 percent of total memory production. Most memory chips in the marketplace today are based on the SDRAM standard. The Intel Pentium 4, scheduled for introduction later this year, will need large volumes of memory chips to support its market debut. Industry analysts for this reason have predicted that Intel would be forced to endorse the mainstream SDRAM standard.

To: Estephen who wrote (48151)	7/28/2000 12:36:31 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 93625

Hi Estephen; Re "OKI a major supplier of a full line of memory products, including DRAMs in 1-Mbit to 64-Mbit configurations, and VRAM, field memory* and line memory ASM products." BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Estephen, you don't know the simplest fact about the memory industry, otherwise you would never be able to post this line of obsolete bull with a straight face. Clearly, what you posted is from advertising documents from about 4 years ago. None of the stuff you mentioned are current memory products, they are obsolete, or no longer made by Oki. VRAM* was made obsolete by SGRAM. VRAM is 4 memory generations old and is deader than a doornail. It is not covered by the Rambus royalty agreement. The biggest VRAM Oki has is only 4Mb, while modern SGRAMs (as are shipping with Nvidia chips) are sized at 64Mb. okisemi.com *Field memory* was made obsolete by SDRAM, or maybe one of the DRAM varieties. It is not covered by the Rambus royalty agreement. Field memory dates to the early 90s. It is now being sold only as replacements for obsolete equipment. The biggest one Oki has is 10Mb. okisemi.com *Line memory* is almost not even classified as memory. The largest line memory that Oki sells is only 40Kbits. Not 40Mb, just 40,000 bits. The stuff is amazingly obsolete and dates to the 80s. It is only being sold for replacement parts and it is not covered by the Rambus royalty agreement. okisemi.com Oki used to make 64Mb RDRAM memory, but that was a generation before the modern variety, and it is now obsolete. They no longer sell 64Mb memory of any type, (except embedded, which is not covered by the Rambus royalty agreement). The largest memory they sell is 16Mb, and most of that is EDO or FPM, and those varieties are not covered by the Rambus royalty agreement. The Rambus royalty agreement is empty. It means nothing. Oki is not a top ten producer of commodity memory anymore. They dropped out of the race, and now concentrate on stuff that is too old to be covered by the Rambus patents. Oki has no DDR memory. Oki has no RDRAM memory. Oki was largely forced out of the SDRAM industry, and now makes only obsolete memory types. (This is more lucrative than it sounds, but it is not a high volume gig, and in any case, it is not covered by the Rambus royalty agreement.) -- Carl