John and thread,
Interesting post from 2 week old Electronic News.
From Page One of Electronic News: October 12, 1998 Issue
Memory War Heats Up With Rambus At Core
By Peter Brown
San Jose--The cold war between the major dynamic RAM manufacturers and
Rambus suddenly got hotter last week, with the combatants throwing new
products and third-party endorsements into the battle for the next
generation of high-speed memories.
On one side, Hitachi Semiconductor said it would ship its 64-Mbit Double
Data Rate (DDR) DRAMs next month, and NEC Electronics rolled out the
names of three chipset vendors who have committed to support its Virtual
Channel Memory (VCM)DRAM. For its part, Rambus announced the signing of
Advanced Micro Devices as a licensee of its Direct Rambus (DRDRAM)
memory interface.
The announcements highlighted the awkward and strained relationship
between the memory chip makers and Rambus. Because of Intel's
endorsement of Direct Rambus as the high-speed memory of choice, the
major chip makers have all licensed the technology, albeit somewhat
reluctantly.
Yet, many DRAM manufacturers are having a hard time swallowing the idea
of having a third party non-DRAM supplier, along with the microprocessor
giant, dictate what direction the next generation PC main memory will
go. Having to pay Rambus royalties is also unpalatable. Because of this,
they continue to propose several alternatives--DDR, VCM, and synchronous
link DRAM (SLDRAM).
At stake is whether Rambus will succeed in proliferating its DRDRAM
technology throughout the personal computer arena, as well as other
markets, or be relegated to niches. "It could be that Rambus ends up
reserved at the very high end," said Mel Thomsen, senior analyst with
Microdesign Resources, Sunnyvale. If that's the case, he added, "then
they need to take a strong look at their financials, to find out if
that's enough revenue stream for them to survive."
Fujitsu is working with Rambus but this doesn't exactly mean the company
may be introducing DRDRAM devices, noted John McElroy, vice president of
marketing for Fujitsu Microlectronics. "We expect to have (Rambus)
customer samples early next year. Whether we go into production is still
something we're looking at, despite the fact that Intel wants us all to
go there," he said. Fujitsu is also working with DDR and does have plans
to introduce DDR parts in early 1999.
"Certainly this is the first time in the history of the DRAM business
that direction and technology has been dictated by a third party," said
Jim Sogas, director of DRAM marketing for Hitachi. "Since Rambus did not
come out of the DRAM industry, (DRAM vendors) are a bit embarrassed and
they don't like having it shoved down their throat, especially with
Intel and Rambus saying this is how we are going to do it," said Steven
Cullen, senior analyst at In-Stat, a market research firm based in
Scottsdale, Calif.
No Public Criticism
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So strained has this relationship become that Rambus has inserted
clauses into the contracts of some DRAM licensees forbidding those
companies from criticizing Rambus in public. Asked if Rambus imposes
such a "gag clause" on licensees that prohibits them from criticizing
Rambus in public, Subodh Toprani, vice president and general manager of
Rambus' Logic Products division, responded that might be the case with
"one or two companies that have been particularly nasty to us," but in
general the company doesn't insert such a condition into its contracts.
Opinion is mixed as to the ultimate winners in the memory race. "The
agreement between Rambus and Intel happened a couple years ago, before
the sub-$1,000 PC hit the scene," said Mr. Thomsen of Microdesign
Resources. "Maybe the need just isn't there for very high performance in
the near-to-intermediate term.
"As we go forward there will be need for that kind of memory bandwidth,
but whether that's Rambus or something else isn't cast in concrete," Mr.
Thomsen added.
The alternative memory technologies "are basically not serious
contenders for the PC market" said Bruce Bonner, principal analyst for
Dataquest. Because of Intel's blessing, "Rambus is the anointed one. We
see technical merit in Rambus's competitors, but the three most
important things in PCs is compatibility, compatibility, and
compatibility," he added.
Intel remains committed to Rambus as its advanced memory technology,
said an Intel spokesman. "We're very clear on our direction, and that is
direct RDRAM. We're confident we have the right roadmap for the PC."
Regarding the alternative technologies, he noted, "Like anyone else in
the industry, we look at all alternatives and we consider and weigh all
options."
The alternative memory technologies are "not a real threat" to Rambus,
said Mr. Toprani of Rambus.
However, DRAM manufacturers are looking at these alternatives with more
intensity and promoting them as comparable technologies to DRDRAM. And
recently NEC and Hitachi have made some waves with their VCM and DDR
DRAM, respectively. Hitachi has made a concerted effort to enable DDR,
while NEC has signed up Acer Labs, Via Technologies and Silicon
Integrated Systems (SIS) to support the VCM technology with PC chipsets.
In-Stat's Mr. Cullen said one of the major forces driving all this
research into alternatives to Rambus is the royalty issue and the
up-front money for design packages. "Not that the royalties will be that
high, but small royalties are worse than no royalties at all."
There is some tension with DRAM vendors on this issue, Mr. Toprani
acknowledged. "Everybody wants a free lunch, but until we came around,
no one knew how to make pins wiggle at 800MHz. And we make that work in
standard CMOS and printed circuit board manufacturing techniques. The
royalty Rambus charges is a small percentage of the value Rambus adds."
Covering the Bases
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Hitachi has a number of activities going on including those in the
DRDRAM, DDR and SLDRAM space. The company also hinted that it might
already have a number of users for its new 64-bit DDR part, although it
did not reveal who these customers may be.
Mr. Sogas said there are a lot of reasons for Rambus and DDR to both be
successful in the same space. "PC OEMs have to look at risk and ease of
productivity when deciding their memory and this is across all product
lines, not just PCs, or just workstations," he said. "The market is
still yet to be proven as to what will be the technology of choice.
There is never such a thing as the final moment in the DRAM market."
DDR was originally touted as a bridge technology until DRDRAM was ready
to ship in 1999, "but today, in 1998, more people are sampling direct
Rambus than DDR," Rambus' Mr. Toprani noted. The performance of DDR is
inferior to that of Rambus, he added.
"Nobody is building a serious infrastructure for DDR," Mr. Toprani said.
"There are more than 50 companies developing modules, clocks, and
testers for Rambus, everything OEMs need to develop their product."
Although some expect DDR to do well in higher-end systems, he noted that
Compaq's Alpha-based systems will be using Rambus, and he expected his
company to eventually dominate the enterprise space.
Hitachi's initial 64-Mbit DDR device is at the 125MHz and 133MHz clock
rate, but Hitachi said it will be scaling that up to 166MHz in a number
of months with process geometry shrinks and in the advancement of the
product itself.
Hitachi sees the first applications for DDR in the high-end systems,
mainframes, workstations and servers. Hitachi is also targeting the
graphics market because that is an area that needs as much bandwidth as
possible. Eventually Hitachi sees DDR moving in the mainstream or even
desktop PCs.
Demand DDR
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NEC is focusing on DRDRAM and its VCM technology; however, reports
indicate the company may also be interested in developing a line of DDR
devices. NEC is evaluating SLDRAM but has no plans right now to begin
development of any memory devices based on the technology. Other people
who are potentially working on DDR devices include Micron, Hyundai
Electronics, Samsung and Fujitsu.
NEC is targeting its VCM technology at the sub-$1,000 market Socket 7
and Slot 1 machines because the company believes this is where a
majority of the PCs might be sold in the coming years.
Utilizing the chipsets from the three Taiwanese companies, the VCM
technology will allow PC OEMs to ship systems with a memory bandwidth of
more than 1 gigabyte per second. The chipsets are planned to be
available sometime in 4Q98.
"In four months we have generated a significant amount of momentum for
VCM technology," said Will Mulhern, marketing manager for the memory
division for NEC Electronics. Although NEC does not see VCM as an
alternative to Rambus in a head-to-head match-up in the mainstream
market, "we could see VCM at the basic PC level or even replacing some
PC-100 DRAMs in the short term," Mr. Mulhern commented. NEC also doesn't
see Rambus "penetrating the market all at once and the market will see
certain segments that will be penetrated differently, namely the basic
PC market and at the high-end with DDR," he noted.
On the subject of VCM, "we don't know what the performance benefits are,
but it appears to have significant cost penalties, similar to those of
Ramtron," Mr. Toprani said. Other than NEC and Siemens, none of the
major DRAM vendors have expressed interest in VCM, he asserted.
In the non-PC space, however, there may be more opportunities for the
non-Rambus technologies, said Dataquest's Mr. Bonner. "Not every
computer in the world uses an Intel processor, so they could possibly
find favor in niche markets that need high performance, such as
workstations, embedded control, or graphics controllers."
In-Stat's Mr. Cullen agrees that DDR will survive and find a place in
larger systems with large numbers of DRAMs in them. He also thinks that
VCM stands a good chance to proliferate in the sub-$1,000 area. The
signing of the three-chipset suppliers is a good win for the technology,
he noted. An area where VCM may also find another market is in the
low-end Windows CE applications where an ARM processor is used.
However, there are already some troubles ahead for VCM. Ramtron has
filed a lawsuit against NEC Electronics for alleged patent infringement
on its enhanced DRAM (EDRAM) technology.
The lawsuit involves patent No. 5,721,862 entitled "Enhanced DRAM with
Single Row SRAM Cache for all Device Read Operations," and involves
embedding SRAM onto a DRAM module to make a cached DRAM device that
improves latency in PCs. Latency is the time it takes for memory to
deliver data to the microprocessor and is considered by Ramtron to be
one of the more important features in next-generation DRAM technologies.
"Our IP is important to us and under the circumstances we have to defend
that IP because we feel NEC is infringing on our patent," said Craig
Rhodine, VP and GM of enhanced memory systems at Ramtron. NEC said it
had just been served with the lawsuit and was looking over its options
as it relates to Ramtron and the lawsuit.
The endorsement of AMD for Rambus might be more bad news for VCM. In its
announcement, AMD said that the Rambus technology "will be the main
memory interface for future personal computer products."
Ramtron, for its part, also considers itself a competitor to Rambus and
is focusing on increasing the latency of the memory rather than only
concentrating on the memory bandwidth issues. "In a given market
segment, you will have a standard memory of choice and a lot of room for
other people," said Mr. Rhodine. "We've seen the results of the
diversification of the market and a lot of people are going to have
specific memory needs. We offer an alternative that we think will have a
lot of merit when all is said and done."
As far as SLDRAM goes, not many DRAM manufacturers seem to be jumping on
board. The only announcement thus far has come from Micron, which said
it had begun sampling an SLDRAM part. The SLDRAM consortium, which
includes virtually all DRAM manufacturers, says it is still optimistic
and believes that SLDRAM will find a home somewhere in the PC market,
probably in the high-end for workstations and servers. The consortium
has also rolled out the initial open SLDRAM standard memory part for
others to copy and diversify on their own.
--Additional reporting by Robert Ristelhueber and Jim Detar.
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