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

To: Shibumi who wrote (4648)	6/17/1998 5:12:00 PM
From: Shibumi	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 93625

A follow-up on the general semiconductor market -- in particular, the Intel-compatible market. In 1997, Dataquest said this market had total revenues of $20,053M. Intel had 93.3% of this market ($18,700M) -- down as a percentage from 94.5% in 1996. In 1997, AMD had $789M, Cyrix $302M, IBM $159M, and Others $103M. This puts the total for others than Intel at $1,353M. With a 4% royalty stream, assuming a capture rate of 100% of the market, this puts Rambus revenues from this small segment at $54.12M. Of course, the market will hopefully grow in 1998-2001, but this might give a feeling for the potential. Only question for Rambus in this market is how the Socket 7 limitations might negatively influence companies trying to increase the processor/memory bandwidth. I've read a little about Super7, AMD's socket 7 replacement, but am unclear what it will do past 100MHz. The questions in my previous post concerning Rambus potential in the general embedded market seem to me to be the most pertinent with respect to how quickly the company will be able to grow their revenue. Any insight in this would be greatly appreciated.

To: Shibumi who wrote (4648)	6/25/1998 7:54:00 AM
From: Rachel M. Kuecks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

This is from the 12/15/97 10K Target Markets and Applications The high-speed interface technology Rambus has developed is applicable to data transfer between most semiconductor chips. The Company has chosen to concentrate the application of its technology on the interface between logic ICs and memory devices because of the acute performance needs and the relevant market sizes. While Rambus interface technology is useful in providing increased memory bandwidth in any electronic system, the Company believes that the systems which will best utilize the high bandwidth provided by current Rambus technology are the relatively high-volume, low-cost systems in which the cost of the memory subsystems represents a significant portion of the selling price. To date, the principal applications for the Company's technology have been in the consumer multimedia, PC multimedia and workstation multimedia markets. These areas accounted for the sale of approximately $13,000, $11 million and $447 million of Rambus ICs by Rambus licensees in calendar 1994, 1995 and 1996, respectively. In November 1996, Rambus entered into a development and license contract with Intel. The contract provides for the parties to cooperate in the development of a specification for Direct Rambus next-generation 64 Mbit RDRAMs, which will be targeted at the PC main memory market segment. The contract also calls for Intel to use reasonable best efforts to develop a PC main memory controller designed for use with these RDRAMs. The Company believes that Direct Rambus technology will offer superior bandwidth compared to other solutions for PC main memory applications. However, these RDRAMs and the Intel memory controllers are not scheduled for mass production until 1999, and there can be no assurance that such devices will be successfully developed or that, if developed, will be successful in penetrating the market segment for PC main memory. The Company believes that its technology, which enables high memory bandwidth at low cost, is well suited to a broad range of other applications. Other Rambus-based applications currently being developed include multifunction peripheral controllers for use in combination fax/copier/scanner/laser printer applications and networking equipment such as high-speed ethernet switches. There can be no assurance that such devices will be designed incorporating Rambus interface technology or that sales of such devices will be meaningful.