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

To: Don Green who wrote (58637)	10/23/2000 6:40:14 PM
From: Don Green	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

NEC, Hitachi, Zuken Unveil Advanced DRAM Design System Saturday, October 21, 2000 TOKYO (Nikkei)--NEC Corp. (6701), Hitachi Ltd. (6501) and Zuken Inc. (6947) have jointly developed a system for designing advanced DRAM chips with memory capacity of 256 megabits or more, sources close to the matter said Saturday. Zuken is a major developer of software for electronic circuit design. Until now, NEC and Hitachi have each used different U.S. systems to design chips but will now adopt the new system as they are integrating their DRAM operations. The new system cuts the time required to confirm if a designed memory device is functioning properly by well over 95%, compared with previous models. Zuken will market the system and NEC has already placed an order worth 150 million yen. Annual orders are projected to climb to 1.5 billion yen in three years. Three U.S. companies now control a combined 70% of the global market for chip design systems. (The Nihon Keizai Shimbun Sunday edition)

To: Don Green who wrote (58637)	10/23/2000 7:14:52 PM
From: SBHX	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

Don The article could be FUD, engineers who had a chance to work with rdram could all be self-deluded idiots out to spread lies, misrepresentation and flat out libel (can one actually libel a technology?), but fwiw, many moons ago, I did hear a similar story from a fellow chip designer who happened to be responsible for the memory controller on a chip (I pasted the portion here below) when rmbs trading was much lower than today's close. If we put aside, the potential revenue from non-rdr royalties, the basic simple engineering type question is still : with all the yield, cost issues, the way to dispell them is to sit down with the memory manufacturers and go through their memory fab process to see what it is that the memory fab guys are screwing up. With the brilliant engineers that rmbs has, you'd figure they can solve very quickly, what these less-experienced (ahhem) japanese and korean engineers failed to do in their fabs. And it was in their interest to solve them. Why the foot-dragging? THAT would have made rdram a success, regardless of where it is slower or faster. (There are apps where it WILL be faster. Today's apps are just the wrong ones). Intel’s senior management ignored early warnings from its own engineering staff that Rambus technology would be hard to implement, according to the source (edit:possible FUD?). “Requests for information went up the chain and there never would be any response. Two years ago we told them that technically it was a poor proposition at best. But they relied on Rambus for all of the engineering expertise in this area,” the former employee (edit:definite FUD = former employee!) said. “We told them there wasn’t enough design margin; they were going to be hurt by noise and impedance problems. (One staff member) determined there was negative timing margin. This was repeated to upper management. The reported response from (one executive) was, ‘It’s not the first time we’ve shipped devices with negative margin.’” (edit: more FUD, unnamed executive : indeed) I don't know why I keep coming back to read this rmbs board. Perhaps it's the vitriol and pure hate from both sites. It covers all the spectrum and is too difficult to pass up. But, I won't be surprised if eventually rmbs does prevail, rdram becomes niche product, but RMBS still collects royalties from DDR/sdram. So this has nothing to do with the rmbs trading price. Just a critique on a funky technology that has had more than it's share of flakiness. --- somedays I'm just not myself SbH