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

To: Don Green who wrote (54807)	9/22/2000 11:54:47 PM
From: Don Green	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

Rambus love, Rambus hate Sep. 22, 2000 (Electronic Engineering Times - CMP via COMTEX) -- When Hyundai and Micron launched preemptive suits against Rambus Inc. recently, I called a longtime source familiar with DRAM technology and patent law. Now retired, this gentleman is no friend of Rambus DRAM. "My opinion hasn't changed: Rambus is too complicated," he said. The Rambus patents, however, are another matter. He put me on hold, went to his basement office and resumed the conversation with a stack of Rambus patents at the ready. Mike Farmwald and Mark Horowitz, the founders of Rambus, filed comprehensive patent claims in the early 1990s related to memory bus architectures and synchronous DRAM technology. "These were very well-written claims, with a full page or two pages of references," my source said. "The Patent Office later came back and told them to split up the claims and refile them." In 1999, the Patent Office finally granted a long string of patents to Farmwald and Horowitz, with the patents assigned to Rambus. Based on what my source said, the Rambus patents are not something the DRAM industry will be able to easily avoid. I asked my retired source about the impact of the suits on Rambus' goal of getting RDRAMs established in the market. Won't the big DRAM players be even less likely to develop RDRAMs, now that Rambus is asking them to pay for SDRAM patents? That is a complex issue, but my source said that business issues, by and large, override emotions. Rambus could play its hand so that the intellectual property revenues would complement the royalties from RDRAM shipments. Is the Rambus patent offensive a deathbed strategy, with Rambus all but acknowledging that RDRAMs are not destined to become mainstream? Will Micron, which detests the Rambus model, end up paying higher fees for patents than Samsung, which is supporting Rambus? Is it kosher to use patents as bargaining chips in a bid to gain royalties from manufactured products? This dual nature of the "new-millennium Rambus"-wielding a patent club in one hand and beckoning "come join us" with the other-is the new reality. It will be interesting to see if the Patent Office decision to grant some basic patents to the Rambus founders helps or hurts their original goal of establishing a new type of high-bandwidth memory in the marketplace. Will a strong patent hand help Rambus there? Let me know what you think: dlammers@cmp.com. eet.com

To: Don Green who wrote (54807)	9/23/2000 2:53:33 AM
From: NightOwl	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Thanks Don Green. As usual you have brought us food for thought and grist for the mill. :8) With Toshiba's 0.11-micron CMOS3 process technology as a base, TAEC plans to offer a family of I/O cells to support 10-Gbit/s chip speeds, fast and dense DRAM cores, an improved design flow, and packaging that supports thousands of pins. Hmmm,... "thousands of pins" ...I think its time that we came up with a comparable "Mom & Pop" moniker for EEs who have a tough time with their "vision" thingy and bring us such things as RDRAM and Beta Max! "It's a new direction for Toshiba, and everybody in the ASIC business," he said. However, "it's a combination of these high-speed I/O cells, our embedded [DRAM],and transistor density that sets us apart." What an odd thing for the cutting edge subsidiary of the first DRDRAM Faber to say. ...And a scant matter of months after "Daddy" signed up to feed the increasingly litigious RMBeaSt. My, my. ...It certainly appears that Toshiba has found a slightly different use for Sun Tsu than our Richard would suggest. TAEC is further expanding its embedded-DRAM offering with 12-ns Fast Access DRAM cores in 2- and 4-Mbit sizes. Designed as a high-density replacement for SRAM, the FA-DRAM can be mixed with SRAM or SDRAM cores. Toshiba is also offering a Direct Rambus ASIC cell for off-chip Rambus memory. There is a deep flowing current of irony, or perhaps I should say "sheet metally", in these words. "To get on the chip you must first get off the Bus." Yes many are offered, but few are sold. ...Which brings to mind a proper name for those EEs who have been lead astray. I nominate "Emperor EEs" in honor of the "new clothes" they think they are wearing. :8) 0\|0