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

To: Scumbria who wrote (49471)	8/12/2000 1:01:21 AM
From: chic_hearne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Cynic, How's England treatin' ya? chic PS- chic's getting scared about his long RMBS position.

To: Scumbria who wrote (49471)	8/12/2000 7:00:07 AM
From: NightOwl	Respond to of 93625

Scumbria, This situation is rapidly moving from a campy sequel, The Bride Of Chipzilla, to the disgusting predictability of an Alien Resurrection v4.0. It is readily apparent that no matter how deeply you and Billow drive the stake into this DRDRAM "sillycon", Jim K., is never going to accept that the stuff is not worth the price and Estephen appears just about ready to "give birth" to the Grand Mother Of All Conspiracy Theories. McComas, Robertson, Semico, Tom's Hardware, Univ. Michigan, Univ. Maryland, JEDEC, MU, Garber, Larry, Moe, Curly,... literally everyone and anyone who has refused to contract away their rights to free speech, and EVEN INTC's own posted performance numbers, says that DRDRAM isn't up to the job of beating out SDRAM, let alone DDR. Yet folks are compelled to support it. Well, I know exactly how they feel. Loyalty is a marvelous thing; but I sincerely hope the buy & holders out there have done some DD on the prospects of the litigation which is now unfolding. And it wouldn't hurt to place some calls to the IR office and let them know your concerns. IMVO, there is every chance in the world that most of the top ten DRAM fabs would rather reach an agreement with RMBS than litigate. I can't quote you numbers, but there are probably thousands of disputes that are settled for every one that goes to litigation through the courts and to a final judgement. Moreover, with patents in hand and substantial financial risks to the DRAM guys and their customers, they HAVE to have a bottom line number that they'd agree to pay for a level playing field and fair recognition of the relative value of their own IP portfolios. The question is whether or not RMBS is willing to be reasonable. The Fabs are not going to give RMBS carte blanche to set the value of their SDRAM IP. They aren't going to agree to disproportionate royalties and fees. But most of all they will never agree to a framework which calls for RMBS to get its cut off the top, without also sharing in the future risk of below cost SDRAM sales. To date I haven't seen anything to indicate that RMBS is willing to negotiate on such terms. Up until the DRAM guys met with INTC, I don't recall the concept of negotiation period figuring prominently in any of their public comments. Just like their overstated claims of DRDRAM's immanent market domination they have always publicly "declared" what the royalties and fees would be, leaving the Fab guys to deal with it or go into some other line of work. After the DRAMURAI/INTC anti trust conference, the public rhetoric was toned down. Still, I see no signs of industry wide negotiations, rather than the old divide and conquer approach. I can't see a workable resolution to the problem without MU, NEC/Hitachi, Samsung, and Infineon all involved in the discussions. RMBS had leverage out the whazoo as long as the threat of market dominance by DRDRAM (whether through INTC's insistence or otherwise) was a possibility. But that's gone bye-bye. If the Fabs stop producing DRDRAM in the next year, which they could easily be forced to do if their customers aren't buying it, RMBS will be between a rock and a hard place. Their revenues will be in serious trouble without something from their SDRAM/DDR IP. As I see it, and I could easily be wrong, the only possibility for RMBS to counter that potential threat is to obtain an temporary injunction against one of the major Fabs from producing SDRAM/DDR without paying their IP fees. But the odds on that must be exceedingly low. And without that, lengthy litigation will be hard on them. Tate can manage analysts with the best of them; but if he listens to the lawyers, sooner or later the market is going to get tired of waiting for revenues. Somebody needs to talk some sense into RMBS. A half percent of the net and peace is better than 2 percent of zip and the risk of death for the multi years of this kind of litigation. 0\|0

To: Scumbria who wrote (49471)	8/12/2000 3:28:25 PM
From: jim kelley	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 93625

Hmmm... RDRAM cost a lot when it came out. Thanks a lot for that keen insight Bert. There is poor market acceptance of RDRAM among the customers. I think he thinks the customers are the DRAM companies. If he thinks they are the OEMs he is wrong. DELL, HWP, CPQ, IBM,... all have impressive offerings. He thinks performance is an issue but the RDRAM workstations took away the number spot in the worldwide workstation market. How could that happen if performance was really an issue? None of McComas' statements shed any light at all on the 820 and 840 issues. Of course most of the fury has been directed at the cost of RDRAM on the 820. This is despite the fact that DELL and other companies have been selling systems with 128MB of RDRAM for many months now in the 1 to 2K price range. This is the price range for which McComas says Intel will have no offerings next year. Doen't make sense does it? This issue of benchmarks is well understood by friend and foe alike by now. There are benchmarks and then there are other benchmarks. The 820 is consistently in the top performance category for desktop PC's. Regardless of McComas assertions to the contrary. It should also be well understood that the optimal performance of RDRAM requires a 400 MHZ FSB. Bert knew it. I know it. Intel knows it. AMD knows it. BERT conveniently overlooked this entire matter. <FUD> The 820 and 840 are doing very well in the market. In fact, DELL has used these two boards to become number 1 in the workstation market last quarter by a wide margin. If these were not selling well they should be in last position not first because this is all they sell in that market segment. If there were any real performance issues in this part with RDRAM do you think corporate America would have chosen DELL as it supplier of choice for workstations? Instead McComas misleads people into thinking that the 820 and 840 are going away at the end of this year. Well, the Intel roadmap shows that this is not the case. There is no way that RDRAM market share can shrink to the levels predicted by McComas without the disappearance of the 840 and 820. Moreover, it is clear that Timna uses RDRAM as its preferred memory. So looks for a large increase in RDRAM usuage in Q3 and Q4. I Q1 Timna will be out and certain configurations of Timna will require RDRAM as the preferred memory just as the PSII does. Time will tell. If the P4 with RDRAM does not live up to its promise of superior performance I will reasess the entire matter. However, the only benchmarks I have seen on the P4 to date bear witness to its superiority over its rivals. So RDRAM will come into its own with the arrival of the P4 and that arrival is imminent IMO. Your effort to rehabiltate Bert is lame. :)