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

To: EnricoPalazzo who wrote (74941)	6/26/2001 8:18:18 AM
From: SBHX	Respond to of 93625

ardethan, stepping in ahead of another brutal mkt open for all stocks. ...examples of Intel trying to push a standard that other chipset designers didn't support, and failing 1. The premise is questionable. Does intel still really support rdram? Who put the DDR support into brookdale i845, told the mobo manufacturers how to support it, gave them the i845 with the DDR pins intact? 2. There are lots of examples. The most recent one on PIII was RDRAM on PIII. INTC refused to move to pc133 SDR even when the PIII cpu bus was not suited to rdram and gave via an opening to produce their pc133 VT964X chipset. This revived an otherwise dead industry closed to companies outside of intel. More below. 3. Ever since the P55C, PII, intel actually owned about 80% of the chipset mkt (you have to be careful here, the real way to phrase it is that intel owned 80%+ of the P55C chipset with the 430HX and 430TX chipsets and intel owned 80% of the PII chipset with the 440BX chipset), given that, it was easy for the chipset makers to adopt their standards as long as the technology and architecture allowed it. The chipset makers was mostly intel ( <g> ). By pushing RDRAM on PIII, INTC made a big miscalculation and lost their 80% mkt share. Via's growth was spectacular, having at the peak sold more PIII chipsets than intel with their PC133 chipset. The i815 PC133 chipset from intel levelled the playing field somewhat. SbH

To: EnricoPalazzo who wrote (74941)	6/26/2001 7:27:29 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 93625

Hi ardethan; Re: "It seems very obvious to me that INTC wants RDRAM to be the standard of the future. ... And while INTC does appear to be hedging their bet, the primary bet (the bet so large that it must be hedged) is on RDRAM. No? " I agree that Intel made a big bet on RDRAM, but that was years ago. At the time, it probably seemed like a reasonable thing to do, but technology advanced and left the Rambus solution unneeded. Intel is still paying the costs of that "mistake". It takes years to design a chipset, and that is how long it will take Intel to get out of their Rambus booboo. Nintendo did the same thing. So did ClearSpeed (was PixelFusion). Sun appears to have cancelled their RDRAM based MAJC and are working on DDR now. Sony's PS/2 uses RDRAM, but their PS/3 is going over to embedded. That's a complete list of major RDRAM design wins. Not a single company that ever designed an RDRAM chipset continued with the technology. Not one. Intel realized their error and are converting to DDR as quickly as they can. But when you are an industry behemoth, it takes a long time to get the company back on track. What Intel wants to do is sell as many processors as they can, they have recently, repeatedly stated that they are agnostic as far as memory technologies go. If Intel wanted RDRAM to be the standard of the future, they wouldn't have done the following in support of DDR: (1) Developed the i845 with DDR support. (2) Gave P4 licenses for DDR chips to ALi, SiS, ServerWorks and probably soon to VIA. (3) Cancelled the Timna rather than update it. (4) Avoided RDRAM in their network processor line. Re: "Do you know of any examples of Intel trying to push a standard that other chipset designers didn't support, and failing?" Sure, this happens all the time. First of all, Intel tried to avoid going to PC133, but VIA forced them into it. Farther back in time, IBM and the MicroChannel is a good example. Here's a link (note date, this is from before the Camino fiasco): Barrett, Intel face stormy seas Jim Davis, CNET, March 26, 1998 Intel's leadership transition is taking place just as the company seems to have been caught unawares by sea changes in the computer industry. ... And what's most unsettling to Intel is the fact it is not the driving force behind these changes. At least not yet. ... The first evidence of change came last year with the phenomenal growth in sub-$1,000 computer sales. With Intel slow to address this market with a low-cost chip, PC giant Compaq Computer turned to Cyrix. ... At first, Intel simply discounted prices on older Pentium chips. [Compare to the P4 fiasco where Intel had to discount prices steeply on a brand new processor because it only worked with RDRAM.] Only in the last few months has the company developed with a chip designed specifically for this market. The new Celeron processor is expected to be officially introduced next month, more than a year after the first wave of sub-$1,000 PCs hit the market. ... Forrester's Howe also said that Intel's misstep is reminiscent of IBM in the late 1980s. "Intel's late arrival with chips targeted at sub-$1,000 PCs and its attempt to migrate computer builders to its proprietary architectures echo IBM’s failed attempt to move PC users to its patented Microchannel," he said. ... Forrester's Howe also said that Intel's misstep is reminiscent of IBM in the late 1980s. "Intel's late arrival with chips targeted at sub-$1,000 PCs and its attempt to migrate computer builders to its proprietary architectures echo IBM’s failed attempt to move PC users to its patented Microchannel," he said. ... news.cnet.com Intel got where it is by reacting to the market, not by defining the market. They're reacting to the market by switching to DDR, just as they reacted to the market by supporting PC133 and by putting out the Celeron. -- Carl