2000: Going Down

That's when Rambus needed the spare solution. DR DRAM couldn't bring any money, could it? The industry preferred PC133 SDRAM and produced millions of these chips? Ok, but let them pay license fees then. So, in the beginning of the year 2000, Rambus entered the market with an unexpected announcement: PC100/133 and DDR SDRAM were based on its, Rambus', patents that is why all the manufacturers had to pay fees. The sum of the fee, according to some officials, was shockingly high.

Seems like Rambus guys turned out better businessmen than engineers as their actions in juridical and economic fields were immaculate. They easily took advantage of the weaknesses of the companies that confronted them. Toshiba was the first to give in and on June 16, 2000 officially licensed SDRAM from Rambus. Well, the company produced RDRAM for the new Sony PlayStation 2 and wouldn't live through a license withdrawal.

Hitachi was the second to give in a week later. It was most surprising as the company was a stronghold against Rambus and proclaimed fight to the victory end. Well, it was Dreamcast here instead of PlayStation 2 and Sega instead of Sony. And Rambus demanding to stop console shipments. Rambus stock quotes were jumping up and down by dozens percents a day. There were other victims as well. NEC was the biggest of all, but that didn't change the overall picture. An interesting fact: SDRAM was licensed by all big and many small Japanese memory makers, but outside Japan there were few who succumbed.

Samsung remained neutral as it could afford to do so. Hyndai, Micron and Infineon decided to stand their ground to the last. So, the four world's biggest memory makers appeared against Rambus. Intel was also losing the nerve and talked about PC133 SDRAM and DDR SDRAM. In the middle of October 2000 Rambus reported company's record of $14.5 million profit compared to $3.4 million in the same quarter of the previous year. However this announcement had no real effect: the next day the stocks slumped more than 10% down. That was the end.

2001: Still Going Down

It was the year of complete defeat for Rambus, its Waterloo. In March, Judge Robert Pain ruled Rambus vs. Infineon suit in the way that the former cannot produce claims for allegedly infringed SDRAM patents. It was all clear since then: Anglo-Saxon law is greatly based upon precedents, so the result of the first Rambus process could later determine the ongoing ones.

That's exactly what it did. Rambus still sues Hyndai (now - Hynix) and Infineon, as well as they sue Rambus, the appellations can be considered for years, but it's all clear from the juridical point of view: Rambus lost.

2002: Where to Go?

Rambus lost, but it also won. It all depends on the viewpoint.

What about the economical aspect? A clear win, although not that big as might be expected. Intel wanted to get the opportunity of producing regular Pentium 4 chipsets (with DDR support) at any rate and just paid Rambus off. In September 2001, they signed a contract by which Intel had to pay Rambus $5-8 million a quarter for five years!

What about the PC market? A clear failure. i820 couldn't make it on top. The situation with i850/i850E is not that clear yet, but by the arrival of Pentium 4 CPUs with FSB533 where this high bandwidth could be demanded, and by the time DR DRAM price got smaller due to the introduction of 0.13micron manufacturing technology, Intel had already started producing chipsets with PC2700 DDR support. They can be compared with dual-channel PC800 DR DRAM in terms of bandwidth.

On the other hand, there is DR DRAM PC1066, officially certified by Intel for i850E, there are 32-bit RIMM memory modules, there is a newly made SiS658 and all this gives some hope to Rambus. As the technology is improved, the price of DR DRAM is going down. So, it's not quite clear what we will have in the future. Yes, the next year is the year of PC2700, but then? DDR-II? Seems likely. But maybe it will be DR DRAM that can compete with DDR-II in the specs and featuring some, though scarce, infrastructure.

Conclusion

This story is an instructive one and helps to understand the laws of the computer market. The idea is that open architectures are on top here due to much higher economic effectiveness. Intel and Rambus wanted to lead the market their way and were beaten. Intel isn't an immaculate leader in technology market. The company may be the best in technology, but the market may not accept their "price-to-performance" ratio. And there is no power to force unattractive products into the market.

You thought it was all about Rambus? Yes, it was. But the main point here is the factual proof of the thesis that competition is good. It may not allow the most perfect technologies into the market, but always takes up the most optimal ones.