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

To: mishedlo who wrote (56768)	10/5/2000 5:27:09 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Endgame by: ptnewell 10/5/00 3:00 pm Msg: 168512 of 168534 The Rambus investment thesis depends upon gaining royalty rights to a significant share of the DRAM market, either through the success of RDRAM or through the enforcement of broad patent rights essentially covering all current and proposed forms of high speed memory. Lately discussion has centered on the latter approach, stressing vigorous enforcement of IP. However the spectacular collapse of the recent DDR "releases" raises the question whether victory through market share will moot the legal battles. Is DDR dead? Certainly not. The correct term is "stillborn". DDR, after all has never drawn the breath of life outside graphics cards. Many DDR skeptics doubted whether 266 MHz DDR was possible, and whether even at the 200 MHz level a DDR motherboard could support more than two DIMMs. Of course if the address lines are registered, a larger number of DIMMs could be supported, but this would add considerably to the cost (and incidentally introduce additional latency). But reviews by Anand and SharkyExtreme of chipsets by Acer and Via show that even the bearish view of DDR capabilities was too optimistic. Even running at 200 MHz, these boards were so unstable that only a pitiful few benchmarks could be completed. Sharky actually described going through "hell" just to complete this token task. The crowing blow, of course, is that the effort required was wasted: the benchmark scores are shockingly low. Meanwhile the number of aborted DDR launches continue to rise, as Apple missed a supposed launch of a 266 MHz DDR chipset in August, Transmeta is proceeding with its launch using ordinary SDRAM, and the first version of Intel's Foster is now RDRAM only. HotRail abandoned its efforts to develop a DDR server for AMD, whether for a "better business opportunity" as stated or otherwise. The DDR proponents have always had a "you first" mentality. Each thought DDR was a great idea, if it was going to be cheap and plentifully available, with lots of other chipsets out by the time they launched their own efforts. But now AMD is up against a hard place. If DDR is to succeed, it has become obvious that they will have to go first. Yet this involves high costs, especially at the outset. And of course the problems encountered by Via and Acer, as well as the non-standardization of DDR faces them. A speculation: suppose AMD is in talks with Rambus on the production of a RDRAM chipset? We know that AMD initially hoped that Via and Acer would produce Atholon DDR chipsets for them (originally by the time the Thunderbird arrived in June). AMD hoped to get out of the chipset business, now they know better. We know AMD's hopes for HotRail failed. We know that in the spring AMD began running a series of advertisements for engineers with RDRAM experience. If I were at Rambus and saw such advertisements (and they must have), I would have called AMD and volunteered RMBS staff effort. AMD might have been reluctant to accept given the ties between RMBS and INTC. Yet we have recently learned that AMD and Rambus are in talks. CMP media speculation is that these talks refer to licensing SDRAM. But AMD will only say that they are an RDRAM licensee, and therefore have cause to talk to Rambus. The CMP interpretation is certainly a quite likely one. But it is not the only possibility. If AMD has decided to go with RDRAM, they might well eventually accept RMBS assistance (as Intel did). If AMD converts, the game is over. The lesser players will abandon DDR in droves. Rambashing may end in the ice of lawsuits or in the wildfire of exploding market share. If Rambashing must die twice, ice is nice. But if Rambus can only prevail once, let it me through the more satisfying fire.