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

To: unclewest who wrote (20622)	5/22/1999 4:36:00 PM
From: Alan Hume	Respond to of 93625

Hi Uncle " One-and-a-half-million a month should be sufficient to cover us through the early ramp-up, but we're going to have to start in June if we're going to make the massive volumes they're talking about by the end of the year." This is what I have been saying for months: June is thepoint of no return Alan

To: unclewest who wrote (20622)	5/23/1999 2:51:00 AM
From: woodside	Respond to of 93625

winmag.com Speed, Speed and More Speed --by Jonathan Blackwood, Senior Technology Editor Inside the Pentium III What's new in the Pentium III? The most important issue at present is speed-500MHz now, with 600MHz expected this summer. Then there's SSE, 70 new instructions intended to accelerate 3D graphics and streaming data types such as video and audio. Despite all the hype about the SSE instructions, there are few business applications that make use of them yet, except for specialized apps such as Dragon NaturallySpeaking or Adobe Photoshop. If more software developers opt to harness SSE, the new instructions could improve the quality of videoconferencing, speech recognition and other media-rich apps. But if software vendors' relative lack of interest in the MMX instruction set-SSE's predecessor-is any indicator, don't expect this to happen soon. Intel also claims SSE will improve Internet performance, but bandwidth, not processor power, remains the biggest bottleneck there. Since Intel didn't really improve the P6 core itself with the Pentium III, don't expect any improvement over a Pentium II-other than that afforded by clock speed-on non-SSE-enabled apps. But higher clock speed alone might not be enough to distinguish the Pentium III. For typical business applications-word processing, spreadsheets and Web surfing-300MHz is wholly sufficient. A 500MHz PC might be overkill, especially considering its cost: A 500MHz Pentium III will cost at least $2,200, while a 333MHz-class PC can be had for well under $1,000. The Pentium III's SSE instructions will be a market differentiator, becoming the key distinction between Intel's low-cost Celerons and its higher-priced offerings as the Celeron achieves higher and higher clock rates. The distinctions among Intel processors grow even murkier when you consider that hardware hackers routinely overclock their Celeron systems all the way to 500MHz (don't try this yourself!). And while Intel has demonstrated a Pentium III running at 1 gigahertz, the company has also designed the chip so that it can't be overclocked. Expect such circuitry to be built into future versions of the Celeron. But perhaps the most important new product from Intel will be its Camino (440JX) chipset-which should be out by the time you read this. The 440JX chipset will ramp up the bus speed to 133MHz and enable the use of Direct Rambus Dynamic RAM. Direct RDRAM offers impressive speed, with a peak bandwidth of 1.6GB per second compared with SDRAM's 125MBps. Back \| Next © 1999 Windows Magazine June 1999, Page 149.

To: unclewest who wrote (20622)	5/23/1999 2:57:00 AM
From: woodside	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

techweb.com May 17, 1999, Issue: 1160 Section: Semiconductors Rambus delay stirs quick-fix specter Mark Ellserry In early February, Intel Corp. announced it was delaying the introduction of the Intel RDRAM platform-a technology that was to feature the 800-MHz Direct Rambus DRAM interface-until September 1999. That unexpected industry revelation immediately resulted in a flurry of market repositioning by all affected parties. Due to this delay, many PC OEMs are now seriously considering PC133 as a viable alternative to Rambus for all system price points. PC133 would certainly fill the gap in product until the September release of Direct RDRAM. However, the fundamental question for the industry remains: Is it worthwhile to look to PC133 SDRAM as a temporary standard for those high-end systems previously planned for Rambus, or should the market wait the extra three months for the Rambus debut? Looking at this issue in the most positive light, an argument can be made that PC133 is a viable alternative to Rambus since the current motherboard architecture remains the same. Yet for middle and high price-point systems, the question remains: Why invest resources in a lower-performance product-possibly not available until July-when Rambus-based systems will be on the market in September? There is no clear indication that there will be enough manufacturing capability to build 133-MHz chipsets for all ranges of PCs. The consequence of changing product direction again is that the PC-buying public-both corporations and consumers-could become confused. Further, consider the ramifications of temporarily moving to PC133. Considerable engineering effort goes into introducing a new PC platform. In the case of PC133, the high-end motherboards will not be manufactured by Intel. Instead, the PC OEM will be required to invest a large amount of engineering effort to design such a motherboard, or to purchase it from a PC- board manufacturer. Once designed, the new product must be qualified for production and sale. PC OEMs must ask themselves if this hefty investment is worth a 90-day delay. In these difficult times, that delay does not justify changing product plans in midstream. In the event that the PC industry does move away from Rambus for high-end systems, we may discover that such market maneuvering and apparent uncertainty results in a decrease in third-quarter PC sales. Market actions of this nature may have a devastating effect as their consequences cascade down to PC consumers. If the industry does choose to use PC133 as a near-term stopgap, PC customers could become confused about which PC generation to buy, and may even suspend any significant investment in PC133 systems in anticipation of the release of the high-performance Rambus version. When Rambus got the Intel nod over DDR (double-data-rate) SDRAM in 1997, all Rambus licensees geared up to produce this high-performance device. We fully understood that there would be an enormous amount of technical effort required to make Rambus successful, and we have worked steadily to reach that goal. Yet it has only been in the last few months that the hardware has been available for debugging, system testing, and validation. The work accomplished through January of this year produced a stable system with excellent operation at a 600-MHz data-transfer rate. However, PC OEMs decided they did not want to introduce systems with only 600 MHz. Intel was therefore forced to delay its chipset until September, when it would have 700- and 800-MHz transfer-rate performance to meet PC OEM requirements. This is where we stand today. From my perspective, it is foolhardy for the industry to try to slip in a temporary fix to high-end systems offerings when there is so much technical momentum going for Rambus. Earlier, the PC market made a resounding commitment to Rambus, and all the players have been solidly behind this next-generation DRAM technology. Ramp issues remain, but there is high confidence within the industry for an expedient resolution. So let us not lose sight of the progress we have made and of our Rambus objectives. And above all, let us not put our well-orchestrated product plans on the back burner. Rather, let us keep pressing forward with Rambus. -Mark Ellsberry is vice president of marketing at the semiconductor division of Hyundai Electronics America, San Jose, a division of Hyundai Electronics Industries Co. Ltd. Copyright ® 1999 CMP Media Inc.