Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: NightOwl who wrote (5619)	7/12/1998 5:00:00 PM
From: Jeff Jordan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Rambus has been successful at licensing technology to most of the major DRAM companies. We have. Most of them have it now. There has been some controversy, though, in that a lot of the DRAM companies that license your technology are trying to develop other technologies because they don't want to pay the royalties. It's a competitive world. Just because they license us doesn't mean they're not going to compete and develop some alternatives. We don't ask them not to, and we don't expect them not to. If you look at the history of the DRAM business, there's been continual competition for leadership in the memory interface area. upside.com

To: NightOwl who wrote (5619)	7/12/1998 5:01:00 PM
From: Alan Bell	Respond to of 93625

NightOwl, You are right that my comments are aimed at the long term. They are somewhat speculative. I want to clarify a few points - An L1 cache is the one in the processor chip. It is critical and will be with us forever. As process size shrinks the L1 size can increase. The L2 cache may also continue to be needed. The inclusion of an L2 cache would not preclude putting Rambus channels on the processor. The tradeoff between bandwidth, latency and number of memory channels is very complicated and important. It is often analyzed by running simulations of instruction traces. It is really hard to say off hand where it is in the Rambus case vs. the "competitors." You talk about there having to be motherboard ramifications. That is certainly true. But Intel could put some RDram inside their slot package. A primary reason they went from a socket architecture to a slot architecture was to be able to control the "electricals" on the connection between processor and L2. (I know, it also made life hard for AMD.) -- Alan