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

To: MileHigh who wrote (19869)	5/10/1999 8:05:00 PM
From: kash johal	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 93625

Milehigh, Re: Cost impact of RDRAM I think it is very simplistic to talk about a 10% die size penalty between RDRAM and non RDRAM. First of all the RAM portion yields extremely well due to redundancy in the memory. There is no redundancy in the Rambus specific portion. Therefore the die cost penalty may be more like 25-30%. In addition the devices are packaged in higher pin count packages and also have a speed bin yield. Essentially current DRAMs do not have a bin speed yield as almost all devices meet the timing for 100Mhz operation. As we move to 0.2 micron these parts again face no speed yield at meeting 133Mhz SDRAM speeds. However there are major speed and test issues with RDRAM as well as much higher costs to manfacture the RIMMS. So it is not inconcievable that there will be a 50% to 100% premium for the RDRAMs over 133 SDRAMs. As the big push for these memories will be performance PCs with the camino chip set initially, such systems will typically have at least 128Mb as system memory if not 256Mb. This translates to a $500 system cost differential. Surely consumers will not pay this but just move up to the next fastest CPU. And so only consumers purchasing the highest speed Coppermine systems at 533/600Mhz will even consider such a purchase. I suspect that dreams of huge RDRAM volumes in 99 and possibly even yr 2000 are misplaced. So even if one is a believer in RDRAM long term - yr 2001/2002 is the short term outlook not grim. In fact I expect Intel to deliver the Camino by september but initial volumes will be very disapointing forcing the price much lower than today. Welcome your thoughts. I have no position right now although may buy some for the Camino hype and run up. Regards, Kash