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

To: gnuman who wrote (64068)	1/11/2001 8:58:46 AM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Re: Intel says it can ship 18 - 20M P4's this year. But they won't be running RDRAM.... Taiwan's Chip Giants Abandon RDRAM Contract Manufacturing November 9, 2000 (TAIPEI) -- Winbond Electronics Corp., Promos Technologies Inc. and Powerchip Semiconductor Corp., three leading local DRAM makers, have decided to pull out of the production of Rambus DRAMs, saying future prospects of the RDRAM market are very doubtful. Winbond's top executive confirmed on Nov. 5 that plans to manufacture RDRAMs will be indefinitely postponed, as the demand from Toshiba Corp. is on the wane, and the take-up of Sony's PS2 game machine has so far been lukewarm. Winbond previously planned to start RDRAM contract manufacturing in its 8-inch wafer fab plant in September, and to make its first shipments at the end of the year. However, the murky outlook of the RDRAM market has forced the company to reconsider its production policy. Local DRAM makers have decided to opt out of RDRAM production not only because of the run down in the demand from Toshiba and Sony, but also because double data rate memory looks like it will take the lion's share of the market before long. The executive said DDR memory was expanding its market share faster than expected. Its success now threatens the development of RDRAM, because Intel has decided to support non-RDRAM memory and has debutted new integrated chipsets code-named Brookdale for the Pentium 4 and code-named Almador for the Pentium III. The only way to escape this threat, local companies appear to believe, is to withdraw from RDRAM production altogether. Judging from their decisions, Winbond, Promos and Powerchip seem to have realized that money spent on obtaining production licenses from US-based Rambus Inc. and Japanese Toshiba would just be thrown down the drain. The struggle between DDR and RDRAM to become the dominant standard in the global chip market emerged in the first half of this year in Taiwan, where both chip standards have their own supporters. In the wake of the decisions by Winbond, Promos and Powerchip to put their rivalry behind them and move forward into the DDR camp, it is no longer difficult to guess which chip standard is likely to win. (Commercial Times, Taiwan) nikkeibp.asiabiztech.com [Thanks to Milo for the link]