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

To: NightOwl who wrote (68636)	3/21/2001 1:06:58 AM
From: froland	Respond to of 93625

NightOwl:..Or am I missing your point? I don't think you're missing my point, it's just that we're looking at it from different perspectives. I still know Apple lovers who never miss a chance to trash WinTel machines. I don't mind that they love their Apples, I'd just prefer that they get over their insecurities and or inferiority complexes and quit trashing anything which isn't an Apple. I don't mind Bilow loving AMD/DDR. At some future date he might even be able to buy one which doesn't have its memory soldered to the MB. I just wish he wouldn't constantly trash anything he doesn't like. AMD with their low cost supplier strategy is not going to take over the world and make him fabulously wealthy. As a matter of fact, AMD's low cost strategy may be based on assumptions made several years ago that DDR would be significantly less expensive than RDRAM. Such assumption appears to be less valid as DDR is more expensive than originally projected and is not yet standardized. Meanwhile, RDRAM has been standardized, RDRAM yields are improving, RDRAM die sizes shrink and RDRAM prices continue to fall. When underlying assumptions to a corporate strategy prove to be invalid, the ramifications are severe. I think AMD is at serious risk. Why else would they be rushing DDR Chipsets into the market before DDR has even been standardized? That's a high risk proposition which I take as an act of desperation. Sure INTC had problems with RDRAM price/availability which placed their strategy in jeopardy but INTC solved the problem by spending billions to insure capacity, AMD can't do that. If the price difference between RDRAM and DDR is negligible which it will soon be, so much for that component of AMD's strategy. Value is a combination of product and price. DDR won't have the price or performance advantage over RDRAM and DDR won't have a price or significant performance advantage over SDRAM. When selecting a memory type, if a user values performance, they'll opt for RDRAM based systems. If they value price, they'll opt for SDRAM based systems. DDR will be stuck somewhere in the middle of "no mans land". Being stuck in the middle is one of the worst positions a product or company can find itself in. That appears to be precisely where DDR based systems are headed unless the price, reliability and performance of DDR improves really fast. That's the only reason I can come up with as to why DDR systems are being rushed to the market without standardized memory (which should be an interchangeable commodity component). It's a desperate attempt to identify the bugs, ramp production, improve yields and get the prices dramatically down in the next 6- 12 months before RDRAM penetration achieves critical mass rendering DDR price and performance non-competitive versus RDRAM. froland.