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

To: SkyDart who wrote (17215)	3/9/1999 4:51:00 AM
From: unclewest	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

news PNY Licensed by RAMBUS to Manufacture, Sell, and Distribute RIMM(TM) Memory Modules PARSIPPANY, N.J., March 8 /PRNewswire/ -- PNY Technologies, Inc., a global leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of memory and CPU upgrade products, announced today the signing of a partnership agreement with RAMBUS, Inc. to design, manufacture, and sell Direct RAMBUS memory modules, or RIMM's. The agreement grants to PNY the rights for RIMM manufacture at each of its worldwide facilities at Parsippany, New Jersey; Santa Clara, California; and Bordeaux, France. Initial design and manufacture will be done at the Santa Clara facility with a phase in at the other locations as the market for the new technology expands. Although initially targeted for contract manufacturing and OEM solutions, this agreement broadens PNY's primary roles as an after-market supplier of state-of-the-art upgrade memory to include the industry's latest memory technology for offering high-bandwidth memory solutions. "The signing of the Direct Rambus(TM) RIMM(TM) agreement reaffirms PNY's commitment to our customers as the supplier of choice for the broad spectrum of memory technologies," said Robert Wavra, Director of Engineering of PNY. "Offering peak data transfer rates of 1.6 Gbytes/sec., Rambus(TM) promises to provide the highest level of memory performance available to date ... approximately three times that of current SDRAM." "In addition to high performance, the Direct Rambus DRAM introduced the uBGA package into the high volume memory module manufacturing world, which has been recently dominated by the TSOPII package," said Larry Alchesky, Engineering Manager at PNY Santa Clara. "This will require state-of-the-art placement and inspection equipment to insure RIMM modules are manufactured to the high quality standards PNY's customers have come to expect. PNY is committed to providing the assembly, inspection, test and support resources to introduce this new technology." RAMBUS RIMMs are expected to see applications first in high-end desktop personal computers followed by servers and workstations, with a migration into other high-bandwidth applications as they develop for ever-improving video, multimedia, and communications needs. The technology spans multiple generations of DRAM devices from 32MB to 1GB densities. PNY's initial offerings will include 32MB thru 256MB capacities using 4, 6, 8, 12, and 16 chip solutions. PNY Technologies, Inc. is a privately held company with its Corporate Headquarters in Parsippany, N.J. and advanced manufacturing and testing facilities in Parsippany, N.J.; Santa Clara, Cal.; and Bordeaux, France. For more information on PNY and its products, please contact PNY Technologies, Inc., at 800-PNY-7079, or visit its website at pny.com. SOURCE PNY Technologies, Inc.

To: SkyDart who wrote (17215)	3/9/1999 4:58:00 AM
From: unclewest	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

rmbs news E-Beam Analysis Probes Innards Of Chips (03/08/99, 11:26 a.m. ET) Semiconductor Business News OTTAWA -- A new competitive analysis service using electron-bean technology has been launched by Semiconductor Insights here to probe inside advanced ICs and the performance of intellectual-property cores. The electron-beam analysis (EBA) technique measures internal signals of ICs while they operate, uncovering aspects of the operations of devices that may go unnoticed, according to the consulting company. The consultancy said its EBA service is used to determine the performance of new 256-megabit Double Data Rate (DDR) DRAMchips, Rambus memories, and embedded DRAM chips from a number of manufacturers, including Samsung Electronics and Micron Technology. Investigations of the new sub-2.0 V flash memory devices from Intel and rival Advanced Micro Devices are also pending, according to Semiconductor Insight. The EBA technique is a contactless, non-invasive method of analyzing the internal signals of an IC. It can be used to analyze a single node, a circuit section, or the entire chip while a device is operating, according to Semiconductor Insight. The consultancy said it uses EBA's ability to examine circuit paths and measure propagation delays to uncover internal functions that were previously hidden. This capability, said the consultancy can aid further understanding and analysis of leading-edge semiconductor design techniques, helping Semiconductor Insights' clients evaluate the merits or problems of their competitors' technology. "The goal of our consulting services is to work with our clients to develop their technology strategy," said Derek Nuhn, vice president of sales and marketing at Semiconductor Insight.

To: SkyDart who wrote (17215)	3/9/1999 5:08:00 AM
From: unclewest	Respond to of 93625

the manner of reporting this cracks me up. the nature of news is controversy meaning these guys just can't give a positive slant to any story no matter how wonderful. just a few months ago none of us thought rdram would ever make it to portables...too much heat, drained batteries etc. then we thought, well these problems may get worked out in a few years. now we get into laptops next year. as good as that news is, they present the story as negatively as possible. Rambus setting sights on notebook market -- But Intel's DRDRAM delay may push out volume adoption to 2000 Andrew MacLellan Silicon Valley- Rambus Inc. is gearing up its new high-speed memory interface for the notebook PC, betting that success in the desktop computing space will win it converts in other markets. With several power features suiting it specifically to the portable environment, Direct Rambus DRAM may show promise, provided it can sidestep the impedance and thermal issues that surfaced during its integration into the desktop PC, observers said. Intel Corp.'s confirmation last month that it is delaying chipset support for Direct RDRAM until late in the third quarter will likely push out Rambus' volume adoption into mobile platforms to the second half of next year, according to Sherry Garber, an analyst with Semico Research Corp., Phoenix. Still, if Direct RDRAM is to become the market's dominant memory architecture, it must score successes within this arena, she added. "The notebook market has the highest growth" of any computer segment, she said. "Not the biggest volume necessarily, but the highest growth; and it's important for Rambus to get into this market if it wants to be a major DRAM supplier." Much of the debate surrounding which DRAM technology will drive tomorrow's platforms has centered around desktop PCs, which are typically the first to adopt new technology. However, as witnessed by Intel's converging desktop and notebook roadmaps, portable designs no longer necessarily trail their desk-bound brethren. "The RDRAM is an important element in closing the performance gap between desktop and mobile systems," said Daniel Lenehan, director of architecture for Intel's Mobile and Handheld Products Group, in a statement. Hoping to capitalize on the mobile market, Rambus, Mountain View, Calif., has built into its interface a special low-power mode as well as compliance with Intel's Mobile 2000 power guidelines. And the company's Direct RDRAM delivers twice the performance of a standard PC100 SDRAM while consuming less power, according to Subodh Toprani, vice president and general manager of Rambus' Logic Products Division. In addition to active, standby, and power-down modes, Direct RDRAM features a "nap" mode. A memory subsystem in standby mode typically consumes 175 mW, mostly to maintain power to the delay-lock-loop (DLL), Toprani said. In power-down mode, this feature is turned off, dropping power consumption to just 3.5 mW. However, when the PC is reactivated, it can take as long as 10 ms to turn the DLL back on. Rambus said its nap mode, by comparison, consumes a modest 11 mW to keep the DLL in a ready state that requires just 50 ns to power up. By deciding how many chips in the memory subsystem can exercise the nap-mode feature, designers can optimize battery life by saving up to a quarter-watt per system, according to Toprani. Additionally, Rambus said Direct RDRAM uses less power when operating in either a distributed or localized fashion. In a 64-Mbyte system, Direct RDRAM executing a distributed workload across all four DRAMs in the system consumes just 2.4 W while delivering bandwidth of 1.6 Mbytes/s. A similar scenario using PC100 SDRAM would eat up 3.2 W of power while achieving a bandwidth of just 800 Mbytes/s, Toprani claimed. To support its customers' mobile-PC needs, Rambus' licensees are readying SO-RIMM modules and connectors, as well as an SO version of the so-called Continuity module, which is required to complete the circuit in sockets not populated by RIMMs. Copyright ® 1999 CMP Media Inc.