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

To: Jdaasoc who wrote (72550)	5/10/2001 10:23:13 PM
From: Don Green	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Bob Eulau Joins Rambus Inc. as Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President; Gary Harmon to Retire After Close of Current Quarter Story Filed: Thursday, May 10, 2001 8:02 PM EST LOS ALTOS, Calif., May 10, 2001 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Rambus Inc. (Nasdaq:RMBS), the leading provider of high bandwidth chip-connection technologies, today announced that Bob Eulau has joined the company as CFO and Senior Vice President. This addition provides for a smooth transition in the financial management team as Gary Harmon plans to retire at the close of the current quarter. Mr. Eulau joins Rambus with more than 15 years experience in finance and marketing most recently having served as Vice President and CFO of the Business Customer Organization, the largest business unit at Hewlett-Packard. During his tenure at HP, Mr. Eulau was responsible for business analysis, information technology, financial planning and financial reporting for various businesses within HP. Mr. Eulau received his undergraduate degree from Pomona College in Claremont, California and his MBA in Finance and Accounting from the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. Mr. Eulau is a member of the AICPA. "We are pleased to have such a quality executive as Bob Eulau join Rambus to succeed another tremendous executive, Gary Harmon," said Geoff Tate, CEO of Rambus Inc. "Gary joined Rambus in 1993 and over the years helped take the company from the small start-up it was to the successful publicly held company it is today. His insight and experience have been fundamental in building Rambus during his tenure. Gary's commitment and leadership continue to be highlighted by his support for a smooth transition as he prepares for retirement at the end of the quarter."

To: Jdaasoc who wrote (72550)	5/11/2001 12:47:51 AM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 93625

Hi Jdaasoc; Re: registered DDR DIMM prices... It's a bit deluded of you to imagine that the unbuffered DDR DIMM pricing is unimportant. There is vastly more unbuffered DDR sold than registered. If you go to Compaq's website and have them build you a DDR machine, they're going to put *unbuffered* DIMMs in it. Same with MicronPC (or whatever they're called now) NEC and HP. Same with the vast majority of the screwdriver shops. It's pretty obvious that the mainstream PC industry is converting from SDRAM to unbuffered DDR. I can put 1GB of unbuffered DDR DIMMs in a single channel machine now, that's enough for my next workstation. Registered DDR is only going to be used in machines with very large memories, and yes, it is going to carry a premium. There is no way that RDRAM is going to be used in large memory computers. The first problem is that it is considerably more expensive. The second problem is that you can only put two RIMMs per channel, while you can put 4 registered DDR DIMMs on a channel. The third problem is that RDRAM takes up more die size than SDRAM (or DDR) and consequently the manufacturers are always later with high density RDRAM than they are with SDRAM. Because of all this, as a practical matter, you can put 4x as much SDRAM on an SDRAM channel than you can put RDRAM on an RDRAM channel. If you're going to go around comparing registered DDR DIMM and RIMM pricing for servers, you automatically are going to want the largest possible sticks. Unbuffered parts make sense for small memories, registered parts are for large memories. For that reason, maybe we should look at 512MB DDR DIMMs: pricewatch.com Oh, I forgot. There are no 512MB RDRAM modules to compare them with. How did that happen? There's 512MB PC2100 DDR modules, 512MB PC133 SDRAM modules and even 512MB PC150 SDRAM modules, but no page for 512MB RDRAM modules: pricewatch.com pricewatch.com Drat! I guess we'll have to go with 256MB DDR DIMM modules. Unfortunately, they're kind of rare so far, since most of the market for DDR has been the unbuffered, but PriceWatch does have some for PC2100 ECC 128MB DDR DIMMs for $130: Or you can order them direct from Micron for $101.69: crucial.com By comparison, the cheapest 256MB PC800 RDRAM RIMM with ECC on PriceWatch is $198. Re: "I still stick to my assertion that RDRAM will be within 20% of SDRAM by Sep and similar in price to registered DDR with all that glue on DIMM." This is a simple miscalculation of yours. The reason you're wrong, wrong, wrong is that CGS costs for even registered DIMMs are dominated by the memory chips. The glue stuff is also called "popcorn logic" in the industry because it is nearly free. But of course since I'm the one telling you this you will never believe me, LOL!!! I'm too busy to find you a link with pricing for those little babies, ask me again later, if you want proof. The pricing is not a matter of the CGS, it's a matter of volume. That's why registered DDR is cheap on Crucial. -- Carl

To: Jdaasoc who wrote (72550)	5/11/2001 2:00:52 AM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 93625

Hi Jdaasoc; Here's Rambus own words on the RDRAM premium from 2 weeks ago: CEO says Rambus is strategically very well positioned no matter what the industry outlook Geoff Tate, Rambus CEO, Wall Street Transcript, April 30, 2001 ... RDRAM is the best performing memory solution but the price premium compared to standard DRAM is higher than desired. Our objective is to work with the industry to get the cost, and we hope thereby the price, premium down to less than 20% over standard memory by the second half of this year. At the recent Intel Developer Forum, Samsung, NEC and Toshiba all indicated that this was a reasonable goal by the end of 2001 and that, in addition, they felt that the cost premium of RDRAM over SDRAM could be reduced further to about 10% by the end of 2002. ... twst.com Let me translate this for mom and pop. First of all, he admits here that it only their "objective" to get RDRAM's *cost* down to 20% over SDRAM by 12/31/01. He frankly admits that the *price* may not drop that far. In fact, since there are considerably more makers of DDR than RDRAM, it is highly likely that RDRAM will continue to be a more profitable memory, and carry a higher ratio of price to cost. Second, he's only planning on getting the *cost* premium down to 10% by 12/31/02. Why mom and pop think that the *price* premium is going to be 10% in six months is beyond my comprehension. Third, when memory maker are trying to get engineers to design in a new technology, they always exaggerate how quickly they will bring the cost (and price) down, at least until they're willing to sign a contract. We've all heard this same story with every memory technology that has come out for the last 20 years, and we know to ignore it. What matters is what prices are offered in contracts, and right now, Micron is selling PC2100 DDR at the same price as PC133 SDRAM. -- Carl