Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Don Green who wrote (62179)	12/1/2000 10:44:25 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Hi Don Green; Regarding “Next year we expect Rambus will be at less than a 20% premium over SDRAM,” he said. “As RDRAM prices continue to go down, I foresee the premium will shift and the other memory types will be selling at a premium.”" Rambus' CEO has been very wrong before about when RDRAM was going to become the next memory standard. Here are some links for what he was saying in 1999 about 2000. He was wrong in 1999, why should the guy be right in 2000? June 10, 1999 Rambus DRAMs ready to roll, suppliers say By Craig Matsumoto, EE Times Tate of Rambus said his goal, admittedly "aggressive," was to have RDRAM match SDRAM for testability, packaging and PC-board cost by the end of 2000. eetimes.com This is Tate talking about RDRAM vs SDRAM, and pricing. Note that this is from better than a year ago, but two things have happened since then. First, Tate's 3 to 6 month period where RDRAM would be 50% more expensive than SDRAM ended over a year ago, and RDRAM is still way too expensive. Second, note how he mentions that the low price of SDRAM is what is holding back the conversion. This summer, as is well known, SDRAM prices dived, and the same situation applies to RDRAM vs SDRAM now. I've been charting PC800/PC133 pricing for some time now, and the ratio just keeps getting higher and higher. Basically, the story about RDRAM becoming the next mainstream memory is more than just a bit stale. Designers will not use a memory type that is much more expensive than the competition. Aug 20, 1999 Q&A: Rambus chief speaks to future of Direct RDRAM market By EBN Staff, Electronic Buyers' News Q: You mention price. You're close now so you must have a feel for what the price premium will be [relative to SDRAM]. A: We don't sell the parts and we don't buy the parts. We do have a feel, but it's all second hand. Depending on who we're talking to, the data can be sort of skewed one way or another. If you're doing a price premium comparison and you want to make it sound good, you compare it to some high-density, more expensive flavor of SDRAM at a contract price. If you want to make it sound bad, you compare it to the lowest spot price you've ever heard, and you can come up with pretty big differences. But having said that, it is certainly the case that price premiums initially are going to be quite high. Very significant, well over 50% versus SDRAM, on any comparison. The reasons for that are two. One is demand versus supply. You can go back to the synchronous DRAM. Back when it came out, there was a short period of time-three, four, six months-when there was a substantial demand in excess of supply. It takes a while for the industry to gear up when you're switching something as big as a segment of the PC market over to a new memory type. The other issue is the SDRAM itself has gotten to be such a low-priced part. The DRAM companies are very reluctant to be investing money in a new memory type like Rambus, which they know delivers significant performance advantages, and sell it at a loss. So probably the worst thing for us in the last six months has been how rapidly the SDRAM prices went down. I think most of the DRAM guys have been viewing it not so much as a percentage...If they're losing money selling SDRAM, they're not going to lower the Rambus price to be some fixed percentage increase. ebnews.com -- Carl