#16

Samsung quoted flat numbers on the RDRAM figures for the yeild. Nothing about speed the speed bins. It's already been shown the slower grades of RDRAM are very poor and the 800's are the only one worth the effort. yet when they are asked about the yeild on 800's there is never any answer.

I posted this on the other board and I thought some of you may find the discussion useful.

The difference between royalties of SDRAM, DDR and RDRAM are pennies. Less than 1% for SDRAM, 1-2% for RDRAM and 1.5-2.5% for DDR. On a memory priced at $100 for all 3, you are talking about $1 for SDRAM, a $1.50 for RDRAM and $2 for DDR by taking the mid points of all 3. We are talking a difference of... 50 cents. On the other hand, the supply controls of the blood sucking DRAM cartel, are the ones that can raise or lower prices by 50, 100 and 200% as you saw last October. That's not a $1 or $1.50 increase. We are talking here $100 and $200 increases. Take for instance RDRAM. RDRAM should not be more than $180 right now. But the supply controls that the cartel has in place make the open market price be 100-200% higher. As I said, this is no different on how OPEC controls the price of a barrel of oil.

What we all should be screaming to is the DRAM cartel, not Rambus. The Rambus 1% royalty is nothing compared to the price increases we will all see come this fall. And from what I'm hearing, the supply issues for this fall are *worse* than last fall, so we maybe talking here even higher prices than last October.

So I just can't see how 50cents or a $1 will make a difference when the cartel is able by their supply tactics to raise prices by 50, 100 and 200%.

And all the yields issues are plain BS. As Samsung already said, yields of SDRAM, RDRAM and DDR are all about the same. The issue of pricing has to do with supply and the tight controls that the DRAM cartel has in said supply.

You guys are fighting the wrong battle while the DRAM cartel is laughing, at your expense, all the way to the bank.

#11

Why do you think Rambus is out of JDEC now. I just wish they could get them on some violation of the rules for the orginization and sue them.

Originally Posted by EaglE
I think it\'s very stupid of Rambus to do such things. They are doing the same thing as Microsoft were sued for (that antitrust thing). They try to control the branch, and have a monopol. This is much clearer than what Microsoft is doing. But the difference is that they do it just in the daylight.

LETS GET A PETITION GOING, TO PROTEST AGAINST RAMBUS, LETS SPREAD THE WORD.

Originally Posted by lilaznboikw1
Rambus is a nasty company with it\'s evil tactics. This just one of it\'s own tactics to sell their lousy product in the market. When did Rambus ever own patents to SDRAM and DDR RAM technology. Isn\'t SDRAM and DDR RAM is open source? If anyone can update me little here it would help. RDRAM is product that won\'t be able to sell forever and won\'t replace SDRAM. Rambus tactics is to sell it\'s company\'s stocks for a offer and in return they must build and sell their product. Quite tempting to me. Rambus must think that the consumer is plain dumb or something to sell such a inferior product. One thing for sure I will never buy RDRAM no matter what the outcome of this suit. I will stay with SDRAM no matter what. I hope RMBS have a fast and quite death and leave us alone forever.

Originally Posted by msoftceo
Okay, here\'s how it goes. Originally SDRAM and its interfaces were an open standard. At the JEDEC conference, new improvements to the technology were devised. Rambas basically then went over to file for patents on these technologies which were supposed to be implemented throughout the industry. These are not Rambus\' patents, no one stole their technology. In essence, Rambus was the one who is stealing.

This is my understanding of the story, and if anyone can correct any of my mistakes I welcome it.

I can't believe that with the amount of money at stake, one of them won't put up a big fight to try to stay out from under Rambus. But I don't know the particulars of the situation.

#7, I can't see how the DOJ would have anything to do with this. What Rambus does with their patent rights is entirely their business.

"Once production ramps up I expect RDRAM to come within 20% of SDRAM pricing. A premium I would be glad to pay. "

Excuse me? Why would you be glad to pay a premium for an inferior product? Almost every DDR vs RDRAM benchmark I saw showed DDR easily beating DDR. You've been conditioned to think that RDRAM is somehow superior simply because it's more expensive.

To anyone that thinks Rambus invented this technology, you are wrong. DEC was doing this with the Alpha long before Rambus entered the picture. Remeber, the Athlon's EV6 bus, which supports DDR technologies, is orignially a DEC creation, which has been used with Alphas for some time. Hell, AGP 4X does something similar.

Rambus is essentially attempting to claim that using both the rising and falling edges of the clock cycle is their brilliant creation, and it is not true. DDR-SDRAM is not brain surgery, but it sure as hell works.

This is a blatant attempt for a company with a poor performing and overpriced product (Rambus and RDRAM) to fix their obvious shortcomings with patent extortion. They are no better than amazon.com with their insane "one-click shopping" patent, or whichever company it is that claims to have a patent on banner ads. (Don't remember, I think it is Doubleclick)

Let's all hope that other memory manufactuers stand up to Rambus, before we are all forced to pay $500 for a 128 MB stick of RAM. The sooner this company and their poor product folds up and dies, the much better off we will be.

-Wintermute

Guys guys chill out, the DOJ will fix this, they dont like the word "monopoly" :)

You realize that all the benchmarks show SDRAM (SDR) outperforming RDRAM. I'm sorry, but I don't want to buy RDRAM, I want SDRAM. And I don't want an artificial price hike from RAMBUS to make RDRAM more "attractive." Its not more "attractive." As a consumer, I want my DDR SDRAM.

(This is called attempting voting with my dollars, by the way. I do not appreciate a RAMBUS monopoly.)

Besides, how do you know for certain RAMBUS had those patents? There were stories coming out of the trial that other memory manufacturers offered Toshiba their patents to help Toshiba show RAMBUS's patents were invalid. What happened to them?

All we can say is that Toshiba settled. The matter of who really owns those patents has not been resolved.

Anyways, this is a bad situation. You realize there's absolutely nothing now that the consumer can do to retalitate against RAMBUS for RDRAM? The only option would be to not buy ram for your computer and that's rediculous.

Originally Posted by SuperRob
I have to agree there. This suit was filed so long ago that if anyone could find a loophole it would have been done by now.

While this means absolutely nothing to me in the meantime, I have to wonder how this is going to affect DDR-DRAM. That\'s clearly where the market was going to lead. Maybe now RAMBUS can give up on RDRAM and let us be happy with technology we know yields good performance at a decent cost.

Naw ... :)

R&D relies on patent protection, without patent protection inovation would slow to a crawl. Toshiba has had plenty of time to find a hole in the Rambus patent. I can only conclude that Rambus invented the technology, got the patent, and deserves to be compensated. Rambus should be 'peeved' that their technology is being stolen.
Once production ramps up I expect RDRAM to come within 20% of SDRAM pricing. A premium I would be glad to pay.
Then if we could get a nice AMD Thunderbird chipset supporting RDRAM that would be sweet.

Or it could just mean they were stupid enough to have used something rambus did indeed patent found out that they have indeed done so and are now cussing to high heaven while they work like mad to come up with a different setup that doesnt touch those patents.

Wouldnt be the first time and sure as hell wont be the last.

Great...we get to pay top dollar for this crap while we wait for someone to make them look like a "total ass" I'm glad I just upgraded and won't need to for a while.

It sounds like Rambus is peeved that everyone didn't follow them so they're gonna retaliate by claiming they have a monopoly. When has this ever worked in the long run? (*cough*Intel*cough*) It's just waiting for some one to come up and challenge it and make the company look like a total ass. (*sneeze*AMD*sneeze*)