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

To: Barry Grossman who wrote (14423)	1/28/1999 3:42:00 AM
From: Shumway	Respond to of 93625

again not sure if this has been posted: Vendors scramble to keep pace with Rambus By Anthony Cataldo EE Times (01/27/99, 5:46 p.m. EDT) TOKYO — The Rambus machine is hitting full throttle, as chip, module and tester vendors take steps that may help ease a predicted shortage of Direct Rambus devices this year. Earlier this month, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) announced it would port the Rambus ASIC cell (RAC) to its 0.25-micron process, a move that will allow chip companies that use the foundry service to incorporate the 1.6-Gbyte/second memory interface into their chip sets and controllers. Chip vendors will be able to characterize the RAC megacell for their designs beginning in April. United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC), another Taiwan-based foundry, has also taken a Rambus license and is already in production with one Rambus-enabled device for a customer, said Jim Ballingall, a UMC marketing vice president. The TSMC and UMC announcements could hasten the move to Direct Rambus in PC graphics subsystems. In Taiwan and Hong Kong this week, Intel Corp. and Rambus Inc. sponsored seminars on the Rambus-in-line memory module (RIMM) for PC OEMs. Though many small module makers lack a sufficient supply of RDRAMs, that situation will change soon, said a spokesman for Rambus (Mountain View, Calif.). Eight DRAM makers have started to offer samples of 800-MHz parts, and the industry is still on schedule for the production of 64/72-Mbit devices, said Subodh Toprani, marketing vice president at Rambus. Toprani cited In-Stat Inc. figures predicting that Rambus memories will take 10 percent of the DRAM market this year, almost 40 percent next year and more than 50 percent in 2001. One of the biggest expenses DRAM vendors will incur is the cost of new testers. Currently, the industry is in need of two types of testers for Rambus devices: IC testers used by chip suppliers; and less-expensive testers that will be used by module makers. "The IC testers can test for as many variables as you choose. You can change the timing and the voltage and get a complete picture of the operating range of the device," Toprani said. "The low-cost testers can measure the ac/dc timing but cannot handle a number of variables." Until recently, Hewlett-Packard Co. was the only manufacturer selling full-fledged Rambus IC testers to manufacturers, but new high-speed DRAM testers are also available from companies such as Advantest, Teradyne and Schlumberger. Toprani said many DRAM vendors are now holding "bake-offs" to compare the equipment. "The fact that they can do this is good because now there is competition among the tester companies," he said. However, the tester companies are still working to improve the handlers for the microBGA packages in which Direct Rambus memories will be housed. Tanisys Technology Inc. (Austin, Texas ) is readying a RIMM tester that will go on sale soon. Tanisys marketing vice president Don McCord said the Darkhorse RIMM tester will be the first affordable, full-speed tester available to module makers that cannot afford multimillion-dollar chip testers. Offered in a "spread of configurations," the testers will sell for less than $250,000 to more than $1 million. Tanisys worked closely with Rambus to develop the tester. The larger die size of the Direct Rambus DRAM is another sticky issue for memory makers because it reduces wafer yields. Toprani said Rambus recently queried DRAM vendors and found that the die sizes range from 8 percent to 40 percent larger than PC-100 SDRAMs, with the average overhead being 13.5 percent. The size depends on each company's manufacturing process, though some of them learned that they didn't have to use extra-wide metal for the internal buses, Toprani said. But Toprani noted that DRAM die sizes always vary widely among DRAM vendors. "At any point in time if you do this exercise you'll see it's two to one. But they all sell at the same price," he said. All told, memory vendors will have to invest $7 to $8 million for every 1 million RDRAMs produced in monthly volumes. So a DRAM manufacturer that wants to output 5 million RDRAMs a month will have to spend about $40 million, Toprani said. To help memory vendors defray some of the extra costs, Intel has been making equity investments in some leading memory vendors. Last year it spent $500 million to help Micron Technology Inc. in its design and manufacture of Direct RDRAMs. More recently it invested $100 million in Samsung Electronics Co. for the same purpose. And one newspaper in Japan has reported that Intel is negotiating with NEC Corp. to close a similar deal. Spokesmen from NEC and Intel declined to comment on the report.