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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tinkershaw who wrote (33877)	10/27/2000 2:38:47 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

From a gorilla perspective Rambus has hair. DDR does not, it is continuous and at the end of its life cycle for high end applications - which as we know quickly become low end in the semiconductor industry. Maybe, maybe some DDR 133 will come out this year. I don't know, we are still waiting. The next step is DDR 266. I doubt, even if we do see DDR 133 (which will probably eventually happen) that we will ever see DDR 266. Ever wonder why DDR has been promised for well over a year and yet, time and time again its promised date of delivery keeps getting pushed back. DDR RAM has been in video cards for awile now. PC chipsets useing DDR are imminent (4Q 2000, probably before the end of November, maybe before the end of October). DDR is available up to DDR 230 speeds if not faster. anandtech.com "NVIDIA attempted to lessen the chip’s memory bandwidth bottleneck by using faster memory and pumping up the memory clock from 166MHz DDR (effectively 333MHz) to 230MHz DDR, yielding an effective 460MHz memory clock. This is a hefty increase over the original GeForce2 GTS, and the 39% increase in actual memory clock speed results in an incredible 7.36GB/s of peak available memory bandwidth." Also see anandtech.com If you want to buy some DDR SIMMs you can go to crucial.com There you can order PC2100 memory (133/266) you can also buy PC1600 if you want to save a few bucks, but either is cheaper then RDRAM. Tim

To: tinkershaw who wrote (33877)	10/27/2000 2:46:17 PM
From: Skeeter Bug	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

tinker, good luck in mba school. i hear duke has a good one. i understand intel recently said that their tie in with rmbs was a mistake. anyway, re: costs between rmbs and ddr. it all depends on production. if rmbs doesn't take off in production then its cost will NEVER come close to another technology that does catch fire. sassumptions are made re: these cost differences. just like assumptions are made when al gore says he's going to increase spending, cut taxes and eliminate $5 trillion in debt in 12 years. how much you wanna bet his assumptions are wrong? ;-) my take on rmbs is that it is a niche product. 5% of the market, maybe. the cost / benefit ratio just isn't there to get production up to a point where it can compete on cost. i used to work for a server company and we were working on a 1/2 U server (2 servers per rack unit). A vendor showed up with a 1/2 U main board loaded with a 1/2 gig of RDRAM. The marketing dept said, "great, we interested as soon as you get rid of the rdram - too expensive." now, dell may be using rdram in their servers. hmmmm, they had the biggest disappointment in about 8 years last q. a possible relation? add to this the fact that rmbs plays hard ball with their customers and this doesn't bode well for rmbs, imho. btw, you seem to attribute the rightness or wrongness of your intellectual rmbs position with your "10 bagger." you are too smart to do that. stock price is perception and perception is often wrong. you also benefitted from the lowest savings rate in history, massive credit expansion and double digit money supply growth - especially just prior to y2k. not to mention bogus gdp and productivity numbers to the tune of 100%+ over statement (look into hedonic pricing). good luck.

To: tinkershaw who wrote (33877)	10/27/2000 2:59:09 PM
From: Ali Chen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Ok, I will try to play your little game here... Let see what you have in support: <In regard to RDRAM performance benefits, and I'm sick of repeating this...the 820 is not a great vehicle for RDRAM> Interesting... you are asserting that "..Rambus has a value chain of the largest best abled players", which apparently include Intel as a main partner and, incidentally, designer of the 820 chipset. So, in effect you are saying that the "best abled player" has produced wrong chip. Maybe you will re-think your position before posting? If you mean to contrast it with the 840 chip, I'll ask you what has happened with "low pin count" benefits of Rambus, and their advantages "finer granularity"... <..neither are standard benchmark tests.> Benchmarks are tools to compare performance of computers on currently available applications, to guide buyers decisions. Majority of people buy tools to solve their current business needs, not tomorrows. A little example from understandable automotive area: it is well known that an all-steel wheel has much lower friction when running along a steel rail. I guess you are not proposing to sell the steel wheels for cars today arguing that people will see all benefits of your wheels when all road will be paved with rails, do you? <From 0 to 70% almost overnight.> It is yet to be seen as what is the definition of "workstation" used in the Rambus propaganda. One Rambus supporter, "Estephan", talked to the point that the same 70% of servers were equipped with RDRAM last Q. After little research it appears that currently NONE of servers are using RDRAM. Message 14666725 Message 14666189 Are you sure that the meaning of your "70%" will not drastically change after similar research? <Yet Samsung is saying that by 2002 RDRAM will be no more than a 10-15% premium to SDRAM;> You probably need some better check as what is the meaning of "RDRAM" in Samsung's saying. As you might heard already, the RDRAM _chips_ alone have 10-15% bigger silicon area, just due to additional Rambus muxes and de-muxes. Therefore the 10-15% difference will remain there just because of cost of raw materials and wafer processing alone. Are you sure you want to believe those 10-15% Samsung numbers, and do not want to consider the final cost of the consumer product - RIMM? <BTW/ have you checked out how much radiation DDR will put out at 266 Mhz,> No I havn't. Have you? Do you have EMI data for far an close field? Do you think 800MHz wires emit less than 266MHz? <Fix one problem, and another problem is created with DDR.> Do I hear "Typical engineering pessimism" here? :) :) <.. RDRAM, although it has very tight tolerances, solves these problems.> Does this knowledge come to you when you practiced law, or when taking MBA classes? <..Except with DDR you have no propoganda being flown about in the press to illustrate the extreme problems with all the pins and interference - no incentive for anyone to do so.> You have identified above the correct milieu for those "extreme problems" - propaganda in the press. I am curious as who's "propoganda" it might possibly be? :) :) <Two weeks before I made my first ten bagger on Rambus ... I like that sort of coercive market power. It is a gorilla trait> Is not it now a five-bagger only, or even below? :) Sorry guys of the thread, I am too sick of groundless hype about Rambus. But whom am I preaching too? Pump and dump, is not it a gorilla game rule? - Ali

To: tinkershaw who wrote (33877)	10/27/2000 9:29:20 PM
From: chaz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Tinkershaw, That's a great response...and not just because it made the list of cool posts! Nice way to handle that guy. Chaz

To: tinkershaw who wrote (33877)	10/28/2000 11:53:47 PM
From: Uncle Frank	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

>> Rambus may succeed brilliantly or it may go down in fire. Who knows. That's precisely my concern about Rambus, and why I don't feel it merits consideration for a gorilla hunter's portfolio yet. It sure makes for exciting discussions, though <gg>. uf

To: tinkershaw who wrote (33877)	10/29/2000 11:29:45 AM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

Re: an engineer friend of mine at LSI Logic stated that he hated RDRAM, and so did most of the engineers there, but they "were forced" to work with it anyways A lot has happened since then. The engineers were proven right and the managers that insisted on the use of Rambus were proven wrong - and some of those managers are now looking for new jobs. Those same engineers are now working with DDR. It's not like marketing soft drinks. There is much more to a successful semiconductor product than perception and spin. If a memory technology is unreliable and too expensive, it fails. And Rambus has failed. And take a look at its chart - having failed as a product it's now failing as a stock. Dan