To: Brian Sullivan who wrote (165283 ) 5/10/2001 7:05:56 PM From: rudedog Respond to Bian - RAMBUS is a "special case" - they started out on the premise that aligning the industry around a unified standard for high bandwidth memory would make long term compatibility easier - a fairly big deal for server customers, for example - and everyone knew that some kind of advanced methods would be needed as CPU speeds were increasing way faster than memory speeds. Unfortunately, RAMBUS technology turned out to be expensive and the early implementations were buggy. As volumes grow, it may get to something like cost parity with other technologies. But the slow ramp left RAMBUS with a problem - how to stay in business with a revenue stream that was much smaller than projected. They turned from a technology company into a litigation monster intent on getting money from a wide range of memory producers, not just those using RAMBUS patents. And some of the evidence suggests that this may have been their plan all along. One company who seems to have been taken for a ride is Intel, and some recent fairly negative comments from Intel executives show that Intel is not happy about the posture of the new RAMBUS.
