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

To: Bilow who wrote (21058)	5/28/1999 11:52:00 PM
From: Estephen	Respond to of 93625

For today's WSJ.... NEC Plans to Boost Output of DRAM Chips An INTERACTIVE JOURNAL News Roundup TOKYO -- NEC Corp. said Wednesday it will invest around 40 billion yen ($327.2 million) to increase production capacity. The Japanese electronics giant said it will spend most of the money on boosting output of dynamic-random-access-memory chips at existing semiconductor plants in Japan and the United Kingdom. NEC said the investment will result in the production of 30 million 64-megabit DRAM chips per month, up 150% from the current level of around 12 million chips per month. DRAM technology, a dense type of memory, is widely used in the personal-computer industry. The company added that the investment will enable it to benefit from economies of scale, and produce more advanced DRAM chips, including 128-megabit DRAMs and Direct Rambus DRAMs. NEC's plants in Hiroshima and Kyushu and NEC Semiconductors U.K., a British subsidiary, will receive most of the funding. NEC's stock closed down 2.49%, or 34 yen, at 1,331 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Thursday. Traders said news of the increase in production made investors worry about a possible glut in the market for DRAM chips, a market that has faced considerable pricing pressure in recent years. Chip makers took a pounding in 1998 as DRAM prices plunged amid a global supply glut. And even though prices have risen in recent months, concerns remain about the sustainability of these prices, analysts say.

To: Bilow who wrote (21058)	5/29/1999 12:10:00 AM
From: dumbmoney	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

Hi mindmeld; Yes, embedded means no Rambus. The context got lost here. The original question was whether you can infer that the new Nintendo game system doesn't use Rambus (or any external memory for that matter) based on the fact that "embedded DRAM" appears in the spec blurb. And the answer is "no", the new Nintendo system certainly does have a "main memory" in addition to the embedded DRAM graphics engine. They aren't saying whether they're using Rambus or not, but the "3.2GB/s" is a hint. I bet they are using dual Rambus channels, just like the PlaystationII.