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

To: REH who wrote (3089)	2/19/1998 5:00:00 PM
From: Sam P.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

REH and all, EE Times homepage News This Week's News Profession The Profession Career Corner Ask the Headhunter Guide to Internet EE Salary Survey Columns Contents Wintel Watch Letter from Europe Institutional Memory Nano Research Today Dataport Online Comm. Unplugged Weaving Your Web The Motley Fool Features Smart Technologies Special Reports Product Info Product File Fun & Games Immortal Works Game Power Poems Search _Print Archive _Site Archive _HotBot ------------------------------------------------------------------------ EDTN Network Links News Technology Business & Finance Products Info Centers New User Summary Career Center EE Design Center Reference Center E-Search Center News Center Design Resources App Notes Hot ICs - Data Sheets IC Selector EDA Tools Network Publications EE Times Electronic Buyers' News Semiconductor Business News Product File Posted: 9:00 p.m. EST, 2/18/98 Price pressures slow DRAM transitions By Anthony Cataldo SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Surging sales of low-cost PCs coupled with the financial hardships of Asian memory suppliers has extended the life of 16-Mbit DRAMs and will slow the transition to Direct Rambus DRAMs, according to officials at Intel Corp. and to memory suppliers at the Intel Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif. on Tuesday. Micron Technology Inc. and Toshiba Corp. will likely shrink their current 16-Mbit SDRAMs to reduce die size and boost yields, even as the industry ramps up production of 64-Mbit devices. Micron, one of the few companies to move its 16-Mbit production to an 0.25-micron process last year, will probably shrink its 16-Mbit synhcronous design again to reduce manufacturing costs, said Kevin Ryan, strategic applications engineer for DRAM products at Micron Semiconductor Products Inc. (Boise, Idaho). Meanwhile, Toshiba said it will shrink its 16-Mbit synchronous devices from 0.45-micron design rules to an 0.25-micron process that's used to make the company's second-generation 64-Mbit SDRAM. The company is undecided if it will reduce the die size any further, said Kevin Kilbuck, technical marketing manager for Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. (Irvine, Calif.). "We're going to have to decide what if anything to do after that with the 16-Meg," Kilbuck said. "Some applications don't need the higher density, such as low-end PCs or set-top boxes. But we get more bits per wafer for the 64-Mbit part, and we think that most of the demand going forward is for 64-Mbyte DIMMs [dual-in-line memory modules]." Steven Przybylski, principal consultant with the Verdande Group, said the financial turmoil among Asian chip companies will push out the crossover from 16- to 64-Mbit DRAMs to the second half of 1998. "If it wasn't for the Asia crisis we would have had a price crossover already," he said. At the same time, aggressive cost reductions by DRAM companies have pushed to 10 percent or more the relative die cost for the initial 64-Mbit Direct Rambus DRAMs compared to PC/100 SDRAMs, according to Intel and Rambus Inc. officials. That price difference should fall to 5 percent by second half of 1999 when DRAM vendors start to ship 128-Mbit Direct RDRAMs, said David Mooring, vice president and general manager of the personal computing division at Rambus (Mountain View, Calif.). Mooring said PC OEMs will still have a compelling reason to move to 64-Mbit Direct RDRAMs in 1999--when Intel plans to introduce a chip set that supports the new architecture--because it will offer three-times the bandwidth of SDRAMs. Rambus this week delivered its design for a Direct RDRAM interface circuit to its 13 licensees. At least nine DRAM companies have said they will begin sampling the device this year, some as soon as next quarter. To ease the DRAM transition, Intel confirmed that it will provide a specification for a Rambus In-Line Memory Module (RIMM) that can be populated with SDRAMs by using a $3 to $7 transceiver chip. "This is not an interim solution on the way to Rambus, this is a way to accelerate the transition to the RIMM socket on a PC," said Pete MacWilliams, an Intel Fellow and the director of platform architecture for Intel's Architecture Labs. "We hope to limit the number of different motherboards needed for the PC," he said. Intel also acknowledged that it is discussing the possibility of including a 133-MHz SDRAM specification into its road map, but that it was undecided on whether it would do so. But the company said there was no place in its road map for either double-data rate SDRAMs or SL-DRAMs. "In the last six months, we've seen DRAM pressure continue and forces leading to instability in the DRAM community," MacWilliams said to a gathering of developers. "All this leads to an uncertainty. It also means transitions are more difficult, and being able to invest in new capital becomes difficult. "In the last six months, Intel has taken some steps in the sub-$1,000 market," MacWilliams continued. "What we're going to find is that older technologies will last longer. These new challenges are going to result in some fine tuning and tweaking in how we implement our road map, but there's no fundamental change." ÿGo to This Week's News ------------------------------------------------------------------------ EE Times Info _Subscribe to EE Times _Contact our editors ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ EE Times Services EE Times Online provides a number of helpful services for our readers and advertisers. The EE Times Network is a portfolio that includes an editorial calendar, a media kit and a list of trade shows and conferences. is a vehicle to request information from vendors mentioned in recent EE Times print ads and articles. _Product Shopper _J.O.B.S. 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