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Rambus: Hidden Gem

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by arno

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Rambus is one of the most creative IP companies of the universe. Their inventions are foundational to modern computers, networks, cell phones, cars, televisions and virtually everything that needs fast data transfer between computing chips.

Rambus was founded by two world-renowned Stanford researchers at a time when their invention was more than 50x faster than anything out there. That was around 1990.

In fact, their inventions were protected by patents which made them so powerful, that virtually all international memory manufacturers (Micron, Hynix, Infineon, Samsung, Elpida) conspired against them. Trying to kill Rambus, they have undergone years of criminal antitrust activity, and successfully pushed Rambus' main product (RDRAM - the fastest memory back then) out of the market. Even Intel was forced to give in and switched back to a much slower memory for their Intel P4. Even now, Intel is still suffering from that shock.

Years of corruption at the level of organizations, lawfirms, and even judges have led to turbulent stock action, down from above $100 to below $4.

Now, after their first patent trial in 6 years, Rambus is stronger than ever, with patents upheld in court, with absolutely no wrongdoing of their part. This has been confirmed by the Appeals court and the Supreme court.

Other than more corruption - which will not stand the test against time and the courts - there is no reason that Rambus should not be entitled to earn billions of dollars for their inventions and for compensation for having to endure collusive antitrust crimes for more than a decade.

As soon as settlements are signed, this stock might jump to well above $100, many believe it will hit $500 within the next few years.

You can find much more information on
http://rambus.org/story/

Thanks for your time.

24 replies

by dr dij

nothing to do with the patent, RDRAM is expensive and performs poorly. the high clock speeds seem great till you realize it has much lower bit width than ddram.

tomshardware.com debunked that it was faster, in fact it performed poorly. intel tried to make all their boards use it as they have large stake in company. other pc makers revolted. (those revolting rebels:)

despite the fact that their patent now is valid, the intel trying to force their expensive, poorly performing memory on us gave me a bad taste about the company.

by atridi

RDRAM was as fast or faster than DDR more than 5 YEARS BEFORE DDR existed!! The fact that they operated on a narrow bus was a factor that would have made it LESS expensive to produce, had the memory makers not conspired to restrict production and inflate pricing in order to drive it from the market!

Wake up! You want to see where the bad taste really comes from, check the memory makers. They duped you into buying an inferior product at an inflated price FOR YEARS, all the while thinking the other guy was the evil one!

by sleepin'dawg

Technology didn't stand still. RDRAM was fast but not fast enought o justify the price in many peoples eyes. Sure their patents are clear but technologicaly,[i]Elvis has left the building[/i] There are other comparable products at cheaper prices. It had its day in the sun but time moved on. Remember Vesa Local Bus or for that matter the EISA standard???

[b]Dawg[/b] ]:)

by mickster269

Back when RDRAM was the "next big thing" , I was actually building the computers for our customers at the time.

by dr dij

they claim they own the patent to dram, ddram
which will cause prices to go up for everyone

by atridi

...so I don't know what he wants from you, but I'll tell you one thing - he's right. You are sitting here bashing a company that developed a technology that every one of you is using if you have a computer built after 1997. It took longer to bring to market, up until recently worked worse, and cost you MUCH more than if you had gotten that technology legally.

You, my friends, have been duped, but not by Rambus. If you would do a little research you would see that there are some slimy people in this whole business, but it's not Rambus. If you're interested in getting the facts, you could start here:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/memory/display/20040102075459.html
http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2005/April/05_at_207.htm
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27993
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2005/tc20051031_874429.htm

by mickster269

Why it seems that the message he posted focused in part on the stock price?

"Years of corruption at the level of organizations, lawfirms, and even judges have led to turbulent stock action, down from above $100 to below $4...

"As soon as settlements are signed, this stock might jump to well above $100, many believe it will hit $500 within the next few years."

Is he pumping the price of the stock? The general tone of his original post sounds more like a shill for Rambus than a techie.

Atrid, it's nice to see your very first posts here at TR are also related to Rambus. This must be very important to you.

Call me jaded, but I took this message to be a selling of stock attempt.

by arno

Micron and others colluded to rise the prices of DRAM by 200% as soon as RDRAM was pushed out of the market.

No way DRAM is going to be more expensive by a royalty rate of a few percents. Besides, the memory manufacturers still have hefty net margins.

By the way, QCOM got a few percents of your cell phone buy price. Dolby also got several dollars from you. Why not pay Rambus a few cents so that they can continue to invent cool stuff like XDR or FlexIO, which make 90% of the interfaces of the CELL processor?

by dr dij

but I doubt the collusion part as prices have been rising and falling since. excess fab capacity negates efforts to fix prices.

I don't really know the story terribly well. BUt I'm not going to read it on rambus.org, this is obviously only their side. and why pay royalties for anything if they did not in fact invent or have part in this?

in this case since its been ruled in there favor must have some merits.

qcom negotiated to sell or license its tech to others. rambus appears to have not told companies it was patented then sued them after they started making dram.

even if rambus patent valid they appear to have done some snaky / slimy things to standards committees by with holding info, etc.

by arno

Citing from the FTC Initial Decision:
http://www.ftc.gov/os/adjpro/d9302/040223initialdecision.pdf

"Complaint Counsel have failed to sustain their burden of proof with respect all three of the violations alleged in the Complaint. A review of the three violations alleged in the Complaint shows that although Respondent is in possession of monopoly power in the relevant markets, Complaint Counsel have failed to demonstrate that Respondent engaged in a pattern of exclusionary, anticompetitive conduct which subverted an open standards process, or that Respondent utilized such conduct to capture an unlawful monopoly in the technology-related markets. Analyzing the challenged conduct under established principles of economics and antitrust law and utilizing the preponderance of evidence standard, Complaint Counsel have not proven the elements necessary to support a finding of liability."

Citing from the Federal Court of Appeals:
http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/NSD/RMBS/msoA7__.pdf

"In sum, the district court erred in its construction of each of the disputed terms. In light of the revised claim construction, this court vacates the grant of JMOL of noninfringement and remands for the district court to reconsider infringement." "In sum, substantial evidence does not support the jury's verdict that Rambus breached its duties under the EIA/JEDEC policy. Infineon did not show the first element of a Virginia fraud action and therefore did not prove fraud associated with the SDRAM standard. No reasonable jury could find otherwise. The district court erred in denying JMOL of no fraud on the SDRAM verdict. Because of these holdings, the new trial and injunction issues are moot."

by atridi

Don't want to believe rambus.org (BTW that's NOT the company site - its run independently. Their site is rambus.com)? OK, pick the one you find most credible!

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/memory/display/20040102075459.html
http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2005/April/05_at_207.htm
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27993
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2005/tc20051031_874429.htm

Excess capacity will only bring down price when the owners of that capacity aren't conspiring together!

by jmgarvin

$500/share!!?? Ya, and pigs might fly out of my butt....

Really, I could care less about RAMBUS, they are a day late and a dollar short. It's too expensive and too kludgy for me to really care anymore. If it came out in 2000, then I'd care...but not now.

Oh and as a side note: What is the stock value of Rambus now ;-)

by atridi

"If it came out in 2000, then I'd care...but not now."

It WAS out in 2000. That's what makes Rambus so amazing! They had DDR performance IN 1990! Even Rambus doesn't advocate RDRAM now. They now have XDR, which is many time faster than DDR! You can get a close look at it in Sony's PS3 this fall or in a line of new high end servers from IBM.

"Oh and as a side note: What is the stock value of Rambus now"

Just under $40 as I write this. Not bad, considering it was under $11 just last October. I guess some folks know a good thing when they see it!

by dr dij

read the tomshardware reviews. rdram was hype.
800 mhz bus speed times 8 bits made it run slower than 133 mhz dram x 32 bits

by jmgarvin

They faked the funk and got busted by every benchmark.

Is XDR many times faster than DDR? At this point, who cares. It costs too much and does too little. They are behind the technological power curve and I could care less.

Ya, $40/share. You said it could jumps to $500/share....so somehow, magically stock could become 12.5 times more valuable over night....sure...

$100/share seems a little large too...what is this 1998? Is Montly Fool talking about iOmega...uh RAMBUS?

by dr dij

they had intel plugging it, producing boards that only used rdram

and in a free country, they can produce as much as they want. I still don't get how any other company could have conspired to stop them.

other than intel, consumers didn't want to buy a memory that was way more expensive and didnt give a real performance boost. tomshardware showed that 800mhz rdram was equiv to 200 or less dram.

by dr dij

they had patents now considered valid on dram
doesn't mean they are capable of making and marketing another product at a price / performance consumers wanted.

and they voted with their wallets.
I saw the prices when rdram was being sold, and the incestuous relationship with intel who only sold rdram MB's and chipsets.

they were free to negotiate with the fab owners if they didn't have their own, and get best price they could. the fact that either they couldnt get a good price or could and were making ridiculous amounts of money (because rdram was so expensive) didn't endear them to consumers.

by mickster269

Hmm.... Looks like it peaked already at $46.99.
It's now sitting at $38.72. It doesn't pay a dividend.

Unless you got into this stock before Jan '06, you really aren't gonna make a quick gain on it.

The average brokerage house currently has it on a "hold".

by dr dij

computerworld.com story today:
Rambus guilty of shady, scummy practices, including hiding patents and patent applications during JEDEC RAM standards procedings.

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