PC industry will die because of Rambus win

[Ar Q]

"Rambus (RMBS:Nasdaq - commentary - research - Cramer's Take) won a major
court victory Monday, when a jury found that South Korea's Hynix
Semiconductor infringed on the company's patents.
A federal court jury in San Jose, Calif., found that Hynix, the world's No.
2 computer memory maker, infringed on all 10 patent claims at issue, and
awarded Rambus $307 million. At issue were various flavors of memory
interfaces, including DDR, DDR2 and SDRAM, used in personal computers and
servers."

So Court ruled that Rambus did invent SDRAM and its derivatives. DDR beat
RDRAM but Rambus got the last laught. Also, does this mean that we are back
to late 90's when personal computer manufactures had to spend $500 on memory
system since Rambus priced its RDRAM stick $250 each (you must use 2
together) and the price got higher every month during RDRAM's 2 year
domination period?

 

[George Macdonald]

"Rambus (RMBS:Nasdaq - commentary - research - Cramer's Take) won a major
court victory Monday, when a jury found that South Korea's Hynix
Semiconductor infringed on the company's patents.
A federal court jury in San Jose, Calif., found that Hynix, the world's No.
2 computer memory maker, infringed on all 10 patent claims at issue, and
awarded Rambus $307 million. At issue were various flavors of memory
interfaces, including DDR, DDR2 and SDRAM, used in personal computers and
servers."

Whaddya expect?... a Cali company sues a foreign company in Cali court?
Judging by the history of court decisions in most developed country -- but
especially those in Cali -- one could hardly expect this particular group
of "citizens" to be any less stupid than any other. The Koreans will get
get back at us for this, one way or another. No appeal here?

So Court ruled that Rambus did invent SDRAM and its derivatives. DDR beat
RDRAM but Rambus got the last laught. Also, does this mean that we are back
to late 90's when personal computer manufactures had to spend $500 on memory
system since Rambus priced its RDRAM stick $250 each (you must use 2
together) and the price got higher every month during RDRAM's 2 year
domination period?

The original count of infrngements claimed by RMBS was 50 - 10 counts is
hardly evidence of "invention" of SDRAM. It wasn't Rambus which did the
pricing on DRDRAM and Samsung has already 'fessed up and paid up on um,
"price fixing"... for whatever reason. Of course now we have the situation
where Rambus just hijacks the PHY to whatever new "clean room" industry
standard that gets defined: e.g. PCI Express and FB-DIMM... though they
don't seem to be getting (insisting on) a per-device royalty more recently.

What I don't get is why one of the major players did not just put them out
of their misery, and buy them up, when RMBS was trading at $4-5??

 

[David Wang]

The original count of infrngements claimed by RMBS was 50 - 10 counts is
hardly evidence of "invention" of SDRAM. It wasn't Rambus which did the
pricing on DRDRAM and Samsung has already 'fessed up and paid up on um,
"price fixing"... for whatever reason. Of course now we have the situation
where Rambus just hijacks the PHY to whatever new "clean room" industry
standard that gets defined: e.g. PCI Express and FB-DIMM... though they
don't seem to be getting (insisting on) a per-device royalty more recently.

Please explain. Why would Rambus get anything out of the "clean room"
physical layers - PCIe or FBD?

From what I understand, many of Rambus's patents are circuit and architectural
work relating to DRAM devices. PCIe and FBD are purely ASIC to ASIC signalling,
no DRAM clocking circuit to be found there. What would Rambus' claim be in the
ASIC signalling interface(s)?

<disclaimer>

I have never owned any stocks in RMBS, and probably never will (indirect ownership
through managed or indexed mutual funds possibly excepted). I do own some stocks
in MU, which in theory could be hurt by this court decision.

</disclaimer>

 

[Christy_z1]

Geroge,

I don't remember you objecting when Infineon who had a plant in
Virginia won in Virginia. Yes there is an appeal and there is going to
be a conduct Phase of this trial still, so this trial is not over yet.

Also you are again talking without having your facts straight. For once
have your facts straight please. The original claim count that Rambus
wanted was 50, however the judge asked Rambus to choose 10 claims from
these 50 claims to put in the jury trial. So there were only 10 claims
in the jury trial, and jury found that Hynix infringed all 10 claims,
and that all 10 are valid. In addition, Judge Whyte has found
infringement on an additional 9 claims among the 50. So now total
claims infringed by Hynix is 19.

"It wasn't Rambus which did the pricing on DRDRAM"

Really? come on they are so evil , they must have done that too.

 

[Ar Q]

"It wasn't Rambus which did the pricing on DRDRAM"

Really? come on they are so evil , they must have done that too.

I remember when RAMBUS died, I mean, when Intel announced that they won't
use RAMBUS RDRAM exclusively on the PC architecture, power users are happy,
consumers are happy, and DRAM manufactures are happy. Everybody is happy
except RAMBUS, the company and its share holders.

 

[Christy_z1]

I remember when RAMBUS died, I mean, when Intel announced that they won't
use RAMBUS RDRAM exclusively on the PC architecture, power users are happy,
consumers are happy, and DRAM manufactures are happy. Everybody is happy
except RAMBUS, the company and its share holders.

Let's see, a cartel of companies, Samsung, Micron, Elpida, Hynix etc
got together to fix the prices of DDR DRAM to kill RDRAM. In addition,
they sold products that infringe Rambus's patents(except Elpida), which
Rambus has now proved in a court of law that the patens are valid and
being infringed on. America is a country of laws where intellectual
property is very important and this importance has played a big role in
US's economic success. America is not here to make power users or
consurmers or the DRAM criminal cartel happy. Yes they are criminals,
some of the executives are in jail now.

 

[Never anonymous Bud]

Let's see, a cartel of companies, Samsung, Micron, Elpida, Hynix etc
got together to fix the prices of DDR DRAM to kill RDRAM.

RIGHT!

It WASN'T excessively high royalties, OR the problem of needing
matched pairs and 'fillers' for unused slots, OR poor performance
in the apps it was being used on that did it.

Uh-huh, OK, sure, of course, absolutely, without a doubt (!NOT!)


Lumber Cartel (tinlc) #2063. Spam this account at your own risk.

This sig censored by the Office of Home and Land Insecurity...

Remove XYZ to email me

 

[Ar Q]

Let's see, a cartel of companies, Samsung, Micron, Elpida, Hynix etc

got together to fix the prices of DDR DRAM to kill RDRAM.

They don't have to fix the price. Either the logic or a standard business
model will guide them to do what to do: that is to price their products
lower than RDRAM. After that, just as what happened next, the prices of DDR
and DDR2 have never been at absurd level like Rambus RDRAM because there are
too many suppliers all over the globe. Also, in the end of Rambus law suit
mania, Rambus even sued a number of small DRAM manufactures who are just too
tiny to be conspirers for price fixing. RAMBUS wants to be a monopoly but it
has no good stuff.

 

[George Macdonald]

I remember when RAMBUS died, I mean, when Intel announced that they won't
use RAMBUS RDRAM exclusively on the PC architecture, power users are happy,
consumers are happy, and DRAM manufactures are happy. Everybody is happy
except RAMBUS, the company and its share holders.

Don't feed the troll please.

 

[George Macdonald]

Please explain. Why would Rambus get anything out of the "clean room"
physical layers - PCIe or FBD?

They seem to think so... or had you not noticed? Better ask them if you
really need an answer to that one.

From what I understand, many of Rambus's patents are circuit and architectural
work relating to DRAM devices. PCIe and FBD are purely ASIC to ASIC signalling,
no DRAM clocking circuit to be found there. What would Rambus' claim be in the
ASIC signalling interface(s)?

Are you saying they're not? I'd suggest you look again - they're mentioned
in the list at www.pcisig.org. Of course they are competing there, PCI-E
at least, with Xilinx, Renesas et.al. and of course if they are earning
their money from real, honest to god engineering work, all the better.

Whatever the media has to say, I don't think anyone in the industry really
thinks Rambus is a "memory manufacturer"... as is often said by the
journo-clowns.

 

[Christy_z1]

They did fix prices, please know the facts before you want to argue
over them. Price fixing is illegal and against the law. Department of
Justice has gone after every firm that was involved in this illegal
scheme. Samsung has paid fines and some of the executives are in jail,
same with Infineon, Elpida paid fines and also Micron paid fines too.
So I don't know what you are talking about the law suit mania Rambus
suing maufacturers who are just too small to be conspiring. DOJ suid
them, and the companies have given the government more than 1 billion
in fines I believe. Rambus is suing them in a civil court now.

 

[Christy_z1]

What is excessive high royalties for you? Texas instruments was
charging 5% for many years for their patens, Qualcomm is charging a
similar rate. Rambus wanted 3.5% . So tell me who is charging more?

Let's see, most computers were getting similar performance from a DDR
compared to an RDRAM. But DDR was way cheaper than RDRAM, hmmmm, so if
I am getting the same performance of course I would chose DDR. But that
DDR price was a fake price, as I mentioned a cartel of companies
lowered prices to destroy RDRAM. It is in the DOJ documents that soon
will be released.

 

[Christy_z1]

George,

Usually a troll is a poster who posts misinformation and lies about
certain facts. Many times you have posted misinformation on this board
( like your current post about claims ) regarding Rambus. Hmm...

 

[chrisv]

They did fix prices,

I thought that was fixing them at a higher level to make more money,
not a lower level to damage DRDRAM in the market...

 

[George Macdonald]

I thought that was fixing them at a higher level to make more money,
not a lower level to damage DRDRAM in the market...

What can I say - he lies and trolls and lies and trolls......... He's a
Rambus pump 'n' dump scum-schill.

 

[nobody]

So Court ruled that Rambus did invent SDRAM and its derivatives. DDR beat
RDRAM but Rambus got the last laught. Also, does this mean that we are back
to late 90's when personal computer manufactures had to spend $500 on memory
system since Rambus priced its RDRAM stick $250 each (you must use 2
together) and the price got higher every month during RDRAM's 2 year
domination period?

RMBS ever dominated the PC industry? Can't remember that. Maybe in
Intel's pipe dreams. IIRC, AMD never used RDRAM, though bought a
license. Even in Intel world, there was a PC133 alternative to RDRAM
from day one - VIA and Intel's own 815 (though no AGP slot, crappy
integrated graphics-only). Was that RDRAM dominance that forced Intel
to add the ill-fated MTH to 820 chipset, and then kill 820 alltogether
by releasing its own full-featured PC133 chipset (don't remember the
number) that performed even better than 820? Even P4 could not save
RDRAM, even though it was the only viable choice until Intel managed
to cram dual channel DDR controller into the chipset. The ones who
could tolerate lower performance (including most corporate users) were
getting PC133 or, later, single channel DDR. The ones who needed both
performance AND reasonable price switched to AMD. The only ones who
got suckered by Intel's "higher end" offering were targeted Dell
audience (and these are on average as computer-literate as Mac users,
and just as ready to pay the premium for the big shiny logo on the
front of the case).

NNN

 

[Christy_z1]

First the cartel decreased the prices of DDR so that RDRAM was pushed
out of the market. Once that was achieved they increased the prices of
DDR. The DOJ documents that will be released soon will prove this and
Rambus is proving this in a court of law in California.

"Rambus in 2004 sued memory-chip makers, including Samsung, Hynix and
Micron, in a California court, alleging that those companies colluded
to artificially inflate prices on RDRAM, while similarly lowering
prices on an alternative technology, double data rate DRAM (DDR) chips,
and thus make RDRAM less attractive to computer manufacturers like
Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Dell (DELL), Gateway (GTW) and Apple (AAPL)
among others."

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2005/tc20051130_650281.htm?campaign_id=rss_tech

 

[Christy_z1]

George, You have such wit, it is amazing. You still did not answer the
post where you gave misinformation about the claims. Or was that an
intentional lie?

By the way, regarding why nobody bought Rambus out when it was in the
$5 range, there was a poison pill in place at $60 a share.

 

[Ar Q]

They did fix prices, please know the facts before you want to argue
over them. Price fixing is illegal and against the law. Department of
Justice has gone after every firm that was involved in this illegal
scheme.

Every company fixes the price unless they are engaging a price war with its
competitor. The trick is to do it subtly. That means, the price stays low
and tolerable so the consumers don't complain, thus no heat from the
government and the companies on the same sector can make profits. Rambus is
bad for this particular sector because not only it wants to be a monopoly by
using unfair patents as the weapons, but it always cries foul and generates
too much heat for this sector. When the industry gets so much attention, it
is hard not to find the evidence of price fixing.

Rambus will never find friends in the sector, if not the entire business
world again. It could find partners, but only from the very few companies
which also have monopoly ambition, like IBM.

They can win a case inside California with the right judge and the right
jury. But FTC will soon come after them because RAMBUS is the real big bad
wolf with the antitrust agenda, not the DRAM manufactures. I shall sell all
my RAMBUS shares if I were you.

 

[Robert Redelmeier]

Every company fixes the price unless they are engaging a price
war with its competitor.

No. "Price fixing" is an agreement between competitors.
Highly illegal, and actually rather rare. "Fixing the
price" in the sense of setting a price is done all the time,
especially during a price war.

The trick is to do it subtly. That means, the price stays
low and tolerable so the consumers don't complain, thus

No, the trick is to set a price that maximizes profits.
This requires knowledge of the cost and demand curves.
The optimum is different for a monopoly, almost always
in the direction of higher prices and lower volumes.

no heat from the government

Heat is not light!

and the companies on the same sector can make profits.

Only if they are as efficient as the lowest-cost producer
[rare] or are willing to settle for lower profitability
[common]. The lowest-cost producer frequently has newer
equipment and demands higher margin.

-- Robert