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

To: Dave B who wrote (14645)	1/29/1999 5:55:00 PM
From: Dave B	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

.... Message 3 .... * Instat says that computer DRAM (main memory & graphics) is about 50% of the total DRAM usage. This is where the 50/50 number came from. Incidentally, the 50% that is Other also includes Workstations (PCs and Workstations would add up to 65% of all DRAM). * Intel decided to go with Rambus 2 years ago (over SLDRAM and DDR) because it had a higher effective transfer rate (again, the bits per pin thing). Also, since Rambus has fewer pins, it's "cheaper" (after all system costs including size of the motherboard etc. are factored in). Also Rambus can come in smaller segments (8M and 16M instead of 32M). [My note: this is probably not important for the PC market, but could be for the Other usages] * DDR does not actually double the effective transfer rate because the address data rate isn't doubled. The effective transfer rate of 200Mhz DDR is only about 20% greater than 100Mhz SDRAM * Cyrix's M3 MPU will have 2 Rambus channels directly on the processor (for a 3.2 GB/s transfer rate). * Compaq's Alpha EV7 MPU will do 6 GB/sec transfers * Some analyst whose name I missed said that in 2-3 years the Rambus interface will be directly on the processor chip. Again, this locks out any competitive offering whatsoever. * Tate expects Intel to disclose more at the Developers Forum * The trend (in order of adoption) of higher speed memory will be (based on announced design wins): Servers - Rambus/DDR/SL Workstations - Rambus/DDR Commercial PCs - Rambus Basic PCs - Rambus Games, DTV, etc. - Rambus * Instat market share numbers for SDRAM versus Rambus versus Other (roughly, I pulled these from a bar chart): Rambus SDRAM Other 1998 1% 1999 10% 75% 2% 2000 35% 50% 3% 2001 50% 35% 3% Next Message -> Dave B Hi Jeff!

To: Dave B who wrote (14645)	1/29/1999 6:07:00 PM
From: Dave B	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

.... Message 4 .... [Now Harmon began speaking] * Sales of Rambus based ICs to date (3 years) = $1.25B. This is the market value, not the royalties (I hope I really didn't have to say that <g>) * [It was interesting to see the 1997/1998 revenue and earnings charts. If you look at the 1998 numbers, you see that CY98 was actually a flat year. But the stock price doubled. There was definitely a lot of anticipation in the stock price.] * As of the end of Q199 there is $28M in deferred revenue that will be recognized this year. There is another $63M beyond that to be recognized. They have no idea what they're going to do with the cash (that they would tell us) * The lawyers have cautioned them about their forward-looking public statements * They have a small investment in ISI plus a few other companies. All totaled, their investments are in the $1M to $2M range. * In PCs, DRAM royalty will be much larger than the logic chip royalties. In smaller systems (e.g. Nintendos) more of the royalty comes from the logic chips. In the Nintendo, royalties from logic chips might even be double the DRAM chip royalties. * Re: the warrants. In addition to the 1M shares that Intel has, they have granted (or authorized, not sure which) an additional 400K shares for other partners. These warrants will be available for purchase (at $10/share) once Intel ships at least 20% of their systems with Rambus support for 2 quarters in a row. The quarter that that happens there will be a HUGE one-time charge against earnings. For example, if the stock price is $100 per share when this happen, and if all partners exercised their warrants, there would be a one time charge of (100-10)1,400,000 = $126M against earnings. Get ready. In addition, there will be an additional dilution of 5% of the stock pool. FERam is aimed at EPROM applications and focuses on the internal structure of the EPROM. Conceivably, FERam solutions could also include a Rambus interface to speed the data transfer rate. That's it. I'm sure I missed a bunch that the others will add to. I'm going to go soak my fingers now. Have a great weekend! Dave B p.s. You too, Jeff