RAMBUS slammed by Fortune Magazine

[Methusela]

RAMBUS gets RAMMED by Fortune Magazine]

I know this has been posted before, but this is an absolutely DAMNING article by one of the most respected financial magazines out there.

Whatcha think?

 

[Insane3D]

Great story...I hadn't read that before..

 

[FrancesBeansRevenge]

Wow... GREAT read. Thanx for the post. And, yes you're right, add this damnation to the many other of RAMBUS and I think they are in serious trouble. Perhaps they should sell RDRAM tech 'lock stock & barrell' to someone like Infineon. Surely with the P4's dependence on RDRAM someone will want the tech.

On a related note... something I've wanted to know for sometime... did 'fkloster' get reamed on RAMBUS stock? Or did he managed to get out in time? Kinda nosey I know but just curious

 

[FrancesBeansRevenge]

<< Wow... GREAT read. Thanx for the post. And, yes you're right, add this damnation to the many other of RAMBUS and I think they are in serious trouble. Perhaps they should sell RDRAM tech 'lock stock &amp; barrell' to someone like Infineon. Surely with the P4's dependence on RDRAM someone will want the tech.

On a related note... something I've wanted to know for sometime... did 'fkloster' get reamed on RAMBUS stock? Or did he managed to get out in time? Kinda nosey I know but just curious >>



Another thought... wouldnt it be HUGE if Intel were to buy RDRAM tech and 'open-source' it... leading to massive increases in RDRAM production > much lower RDRAM prices > SIGNIFICANT increase in P4 sales? Seems like this would be a smart move for Intel. Then again I dont run a Fortune 500 company so I could be wrong

 

[Boogak]

Wow, what an underhanded company. Glad to see they got what they deserved at the end.

 

[FrancesBeansRevenge]

<< But on at least one occasion, silence was exactly what Crisp gave. In May 1992, when the JEDEC committee chair asked him whether Rambus had any patents relating to &quot;two-bank designs,&quot; another component of SDRAM, Crisp simply shook his head no. (At trial, Crisp defended his muteness by noting that Rambus' patents hadn't yet issued. When Infineon's lawyer asked, &quot;You had applications on two-bank designs, didn't you, sir?&quot; Crisp responded, &quot;That's right. But that's not what he asked me.&quot >>



Damn that Richard Crisp guy needs jail time. :|



<< Meanwhile, Rambus' patents were starting to roll in: The Patent Office issued Rambus its first, on RDRAM, in 1993. (Rambus promptly disclosed the patent at JEDEC.) In 1996 Rambus' first SDRAM patent was issued. That year, at its lawyer's recommendation, Rambus bailed out of JEDEC; CEO Tate conceded at trial that the patent issue was at least one of the reasons for the company's departure. And the withdrawal letter that Rambus sent JEDEC included a list of all of Rambus' patents except its SDRAM patent. Rambus lawyers later said the omission was unintentional. >>



Pfffft... sure.

 

[ElFenix]

i wish i was an analyst... i figured rambus for dead long ago... back when everyone else was polishing its knob.

of course, the first i ever heard of it was use in the ultra 64, renamed nintendo 64, and i thought it was pretty cool stuff then since it ran at 400MHz. back when computers were... 133?

 

[wasnlos]

nice article, seems as if they get what they deserve

 

[Snoop]

RAMBUS execs = CRIMINALS

Isnt RAMBUS's stealing of IP from JEDEC criminal, after reading that I honostly hope someone from ramturd ends up in jail, those guys are unbelievable.

 

[Snoop]

DP

 

[oblivion2888]

good read.....thanks

 

[Duvie]

excellent read...

hopefully the FTC will rule that there was fraudalent behavior and revoke all their patents...companies who were coerced into paying royalties will sue to reclaim them on grounds of fraud...then bye bye rambus.

I never knew how many times they had stole ideas discussed in JEDEC from 1992-1996. It is a travesty if someone is not indicted. This was blantant robbery and racketeering.

I will never own a INtel system with rambus backed rdram, and hopefully Intel can pull their head out and realize they need to dump this dead wait. Actually I will never build an Intel system as well. I don't want to add to revenues that continue to allow them to fight in their lawsuits.


I wonder if the dim wit with stanley morgan still has his job...

 

[bacillus]

didn't read the article previously so thanks for posting it!

 

[Maverick]

good post, my roomate gets Fortune so I'd already read this article. Glad you guys all got to see it too.



<< wouldnt it be HUGE if Intel were to buy RDRAM tech and 'open-source' >>



From what I understand, Rambus technology is expensive to implement from a chipset standpoint. Not just a memory fabrication standpoint. The article stated that Rambus technology is revolutionary while SDRAM was evolutionary. Since it's so dramatically different from SDRAM, it costs a lot more to put together a machine to fully utilize it. In the end, even if Intel bought RDRAM tech, it would still cost lots of money to manufacture the chipsets. Open sourcing will allow more people to use the designs, but it won't necessarily make the manufacturing process cheaper. Thats why this would be too risky for Intel.

 

[realtrance]

I find it amusing that a company in the business world is faulted, ultimately, for &quot;greed.&quot;

C'mon, this is ridiculous!!

If the Wall Street Journal has such moralistic concerns, it should merge immediately with Pravda and call for an end to capitalism.

rt

 

[LuNoTiCK]

Every company is out there for the money, thats all there out there for. They are being faulted for it, I mean come on. Realtrance is right, you guys are against them for greed. You dont think that all the other companies are in there for the same thing? The other companies would do that if they could also.

 

[Methusela]

<< I find it amusing that a company in the business world is faulted, ultimately, for &quot;greed.&quot;

C'mon, this is ridiculous!!

If the Wall Street Journal has such moralistic concerns, it should merge immediately with Pravda and call for an end to capitalism.

rt >>



This has absolutely nothing to do with greed, rather, merely the PURSUIT of the object of greed. How they went about things is reprehensible, to say the least.

Sure, you can caveat or disclaim 'till the cows come home' about how many companies do this to get ahead, even many of the 'favored' companies on this forum. However, there is a HUGE discrepancy between what those companies do and what is documented about their behavior AND that of RAMBUS. Rambus was conniving, pre-meditating, and all-around malicious with their intended participation in the JEDEC meetings.

That's why they're worse than so many others. That's why they are being flushed down the legal toilet now. They took things too far. What they did I consider patently ILLEGAL and IMMORAL, I'd even go so far as to say EVIL.

They may have good technology, but running a business as they have will ALWAYS lead to disaster (.)

 

[FordLorider]

ouch, right to the boys!

 

[Sohcan]

<< Every company is out there for the money, thats all there out there for >>

No sh!t, but that's beside the point. Rambus overstepped their bounds...they're only an IP company, but for some reason they thought they were much more. They're going against corporations much bigger than themselves..they only had $70 million in revenues last year, compared to the billions brought in by the DRAM industry. The legal fees alone for their cases and counter-suits against Infineon, Micron, and Hyundai are going to hurt them...not to mention the punitive damages that will be brought against them if they lose against Micron and Hyundai (which seems likely).

If you were the head of a company and saw a course of action that could lead to higher profits, but was unethical, possibly illegal, and carried a high risk of being caught with your pants down, would you take it? If such a course of action could lead to courts invalidating your patents (which is possible and very likely with Rambus), would you do it? (especially considering, as an IP company, Rambus relies on its patents for revenue)

When Rambus signed with Intel in '96 they had a guaranteed source of revenue...trying to outmaneuver the DRAM industry into standardizing their patents without them knowing it was just plain stupid.

 

[frankroh]

When a company spends 10x more on lawyers and legal battles than R&amp;D, they deserved to be spanked.

Time to short RAMBUS equities.

 

[sandorski]

Even the greedy are required to observe certain rules.

Greed != you can do whatever you want

 

[Bozz]

RDRAM isn't technically revolutionary, nor merely evolutonary. It is simply a new idea that isn't implemented well, nor suited well to the x86 series of PC's. What is RAM anyway? That's right, Random Access Memory. RDRAM has a huge burst speed effectivly 400MHz (100MHz Quad-pumped) RDRAM has an extremely high latency compared to SDRAM and DDR (latencies are equal for SDRAM and DDR). Latency is how many clock cycles it takes for data to arrive on the FSB from when it was requested. In the real world RDRAM offers ah heck all performance increase unless you are doing video editing or similar stuff because it takes much longer to fetch a certain piece of info, yet once that particular page is open, the data can arrive about 3 times faster than PC133 SDRAM. OK lets close that page and find another... it is RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY, right.. High latency but quick arrival... SDRAM offers low latency but slow arrival... DDR offers double transfer rate but latency is exactly the same, yet it &quot;only&quot; offers about a 10% boost to performance - This has been well documented before... Just look at the nForce by nVidia and look at the twin DDR FSB, it murders RDRAM in both burst data rate AND latency... But it doensn't improve performance THAT much in all applications, yet in others it speeds it up a lot... You figure it out.

Simply put, you are foolish if you buy a Willamette based P4 - I cannot wait for the DDR based solutions to offer a real competition to AMD and thats when we will see if Intel can become the &quot;honest&quot; CPU company once again that it used to be.

 

[ToBeMe]

Slam the Co. all you can!.......but the technology is pretty damned good stuff! I don't like Rambus the Co. either..........but to be honest the product, as it is now, and what's coming up is pretty amazing!