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

To: MileHigh who wrote (3599)	4/11/1998 2:12:00 PM
From: Michel Bera	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

MileHigh and thread, I still believe that a single company (here : RMBS) has more power against a consortium when it comes to specs (like in distributed objects sepcifications, DCOM from MSFT vs Corba from a consortium-based competition) MiB ---- snip techweb.com DRAMs face tough times in PC/100 era By Mark Ellsberry Dram vendors are jockeying for a piece of the PC/100 bus-compatible DRAM business. The PC/100 standard, initiated by Intel, establishes parameters for the next-generation memory bus operating at 100 MHz. Achieving this speed with the current construction of PC motherboards requires careful coordination among memory, chip-set and processor designers. There are several major issues to confront before fully launching into PC/100 system designs. To set this stage, it's important to understand that DRAMs complying with the PC/100 standard represent the third step of the PC's five-year performance road map for DRAM development. (The first step was extended-data-out; the second is synchronous DRAM.) There is considerable confusion in the industry over what the clock speed of an SDRAM means in a real memory application. A PC/100-compliant SDRAM is specified at 100 MHz, but some DRAM vendors already have 100- and 125-MHz SDRAMs on the market. Some of the more critical aspects of the current PC/66 and the new PC/100 SDRAM specifications include setup, hold and clock-to-output timings. Clock-to-data delay in PC/66 is 9 ns, whereas it is 6 ns in the PC/100 spec. Setup time is 3 ns in PC/66 and 2 ns in PC/100; hold time after clock is 1.5 ns and 1 ns respectively. Thus, even if an SDRAM operates at 100 or even 125 MHz, it still may not comply with PC/100 specs. For some DRAM suppliers that up to now have focused on manufacturing, the PC/100 era will mean staffing up with system-engineering and applications talent. This level of engineering support will be needed to deal with such system-design issues as timing margins and signal integrity, among others. Though these tightly defined parameters bode well for performance, they will also trig-ger some problems. For starters, there likely will be a shortage of PC/100-compliant SDRAMs, chips that are difficult to build. An adjunct issue is device incompatibility. These DRAMs will vary from one vendor to the next, with required features and functions interpreted in different ways. Moreover, there is a lack of general understanding of how to utilize SDRAMs in a system-especially in consumer applications like set-top boxes. All too often, an SDRAM is seen as a garden-variety DRAM, with little thought given to the implications for other aspects of the design. System makers are qualifying the 16-Mbit version of the PC/100-compliant SDRAM now, and 64-Mbit versions will be qualified this year. We expect the 64-Mbit SDRAM to be the more popular, and to significantly cut into 16-Mbit demand. This makes sense, because the number of memory slots in a PC is being reduced. Most vendors are shipping 32 Mbytes as the base memory, in the form of a 4-x-64 module-an entry point where a 64-Mbit SDRAM can be effective. What's next after PC/100? There are two schools of thought: Rambus and the double-data-rate SDRAM, seen by many as a long shot. The DDR specification is undergoing slow and tedious creation, with the negotiations dealing with functions split along lines of competitive self-interest of various vendors. Regardless of which approach is adopted, the system engineer is guaranteed another round of related systems-design issues. -Mark Ellsberry is vice president of marketing for the semiconductor division of Hyundai Electronics America (San Jose, Calif.) Copyright (c) 1998 CMP Media Inc.

To: MileHigh who wrote (3599)	4/12/1998 12:58:00 AM
From: Sam P.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

MileHigh- Katmai will utilize DRDRAM (as reported).Here is another growing application of Rambus technology- April 13, 1998, TechWeb News ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Media-processor veteran gets Compaq's backing -- Chromatic: poised for profit? By Anthony Cataldo Phoenix - After several years of false starts, Chromatic Research Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) claims it has turned the corner in its quest to make the media processor part of mainstream PCs. In what could do much to bolster its credibility, the company has received an equity investment from Compaq Computer Corp. Chromatic expects sales of its Mpact 2 media processor to zoom this year as a result of design wins from several large makers of low-cost PCs. And later this year, the company plans to announce its Mpact 3 media processor, with juiced-up 3-D and DVD capabilities, chief executive Wes Patterson said in an interview at last week's Semico Summit, a conference sponsored by Semico Research Corp. Patterson said Mpact unit sales could hit 4.5 million this year, against 30,000 in 1997. Under Chromatic's business model, all revenue from processor sales is derived by manufacturing partners Toshiba, SGS-Thomson and LG Semicon; Chromatic gets its revenue from sales of its Mediaware software modules for DVD and 2-D/3-D graphics. Patterson said three Taiwanese motherboard makers will deploy the Mpact 2 and that it has the backing of add-in card makers Diamond Multimedia and STB. Most recently, the company announced that Gateway would use the Mpact 2 in a series of desktop PCs. Patterson said more design wins are coming. One of them may be Compaq, which used the first-generation Mpact in a PC theater product. Patterson said Compaq has made an investment in Chromatic and is looking at the Mpact 2 as a solution in the sub-$1,000 realm, though he declined to discuss whether Compaq will use the device in a future design. "We've got good support from a number of big companies," he said. "The issue has never been customer support; it's always been software." With its first Mpact, Chromatic tried to roll audio, video, graphics and modem functions into one software package-a daunting task that resulted in product delays. Next time around, the company offered software modules piecemeal, delivering only the 3-D and DVD software packages when it introduced the Mpact 2 last year. Chromatic will ship a wavetable audio module this quarter. And it turned to Motorola this year for V.90 56-kbit modem software. Another change that raised industry eyebrows was the move to offer development tools to a select group of outside customers. "To make an industry-standard platform, you have to open it up," Patterson said. "We have to be realistic about how much of the market we can support." On the hardware front, the Mpact 3 is said to be on track to debut later this year. Designed for a 0.25-micron process, it will improve 3-D performance fivefold and will process 50 percent more operations than the Mpact 2, Patterson said. Just as a hardware 3-D pipeline was included in Mpact 2, the next-generation processor will have a silicon engine to accelerate DVD bit streams. The move amounts to an acknowledgement that some algorithms and bit streams cannot be handled purely in software. Perhaps more important, the Mpact 3 will be object-code-compatible with the Mpact 2 and thus will run the same suite of software modules. With the Mpact 2, Chromatic had to re-engineer the modules because of architectural changes to improve die size and performance. Chromatic has been under "a lot of pressure," Patterson admitted. "We have a number of important suppliers, investors and employees who have put a lot into this company." He said Chromatic should turn a profit by the second half, setting the stage for an initial public offering late this year or early in 1999. Copyright (c) 1998 CMP Media Inc. You can reach this article directly: techweb.com