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Hidden Consequences: Rambus And DDR SDRAM Prices
Jimmie writes: "Looks like Rambus, Inc intends to use licensing fees arising from its recent patent settlements to force the price of DDR SDRAM to be high enough that Direct RDRAM (which we know is ridiculously expensive right now) can compete.
When asked that very question, the VP of worldwide marketing at Rambus replied 'I wouldn't argue with that conclusion.'
Story at ebnews.com." Sometimes the computer industry's oldest saying seems to be "If at first you don't succeed ... squeeze out some competition."
For more info on Rambus' past business practices, check Tom Pabst's article on "Why We Don't Trust Rambus"
However, I am puzzled by this strategy. For one thing, despite TI's success at defending their patents on fundamental aspects of DRAM (one of many legitimate IC patents they obtained in the early days of IC manufacturing), RAMBUS must know that there is prior art that weakens their claim. While exisiting licensees would arguably tend to support (or stand idly by) as they pressed others to license their technology, cockily taking on an entire industry in this manner is just begging for a barrage of assualts on the patent itself.
I can't believe they would be so blind, even in the heady glee of being gran such ridiculously broad patents like #6,067,592 System having a synchronous memory device [May 23, 3000] and #6,049,846 Integrated circuit having memory which synchronously samples information with respect to external clock signals
In fact, I think we have a duty to use the accumulated experience of our older (and much underappreciated) readers to start picking off the more outrageous patent claims one by one.
The easier we make it for the remaining memory companies to see their options, the better for *us*
To save you some work, here's a partial list of active Rambus patents (and linked to each of the patents themselves). It's not a complete list (IANAPA), but it should save everyone some work getting started. See anything that looks familiar from "way back when"?
1. 6,075,743. Method and apparatus for sharing sense amplifiers between memory banks
2. 6,075,730. High performance cost optimized memory with delayed memory writes
3. 6,070,222. Synchronous memory device having identification register
4. 6,067,592. System having a synchronous memory device
5. 6,049,846. Integrated circuit having memory which synchronously samples information with respect to external clock signals
6. 6,044,426. Memory system having memory devices each including a programmable internal register
7. 6,038,195. Synchronous memory device having a delay time register and method of operating same
8. 6,035,369. Method and apparatus for providing a memory with write enable information
9. 6,035,365. Dual clocked synchronous memory device having a delay time register and method of operating same
10. 6,034,918. Method of operating a memory having a variable data output length and a programmable register
11. 6,032,215. Synchronous memory device utilizing two external clocks
12. 6,032,214. Method of operating a synchronous memory device having a variable data output length
13. 6,021,076. Apparatus and method for thermal regulation in memory subsystems
14. 5,995,443. Synchronous memory device
15. 5,966,731. Protocol for communication with dynamic memory
16. 5,956,284. Method and apparatus for writing to memory components
17. 5,954,804. Synchronous memory device having an internal register
18. 5,953,263. Synchronous memory device having a programmable register and method of controlling same
19. 5,940,340. Method and apparatus for writing to memory components
20. 5,928,343. Memory module having memory devices containing internal device ID registers and method of initializing same
21. 5,913,046. Protocol for communication with dynamic memory
22. 5,896,545. Transmitting memory requests for multiple block format memory operations the requests comprising count information, a mask, and a second mask
23. 5,872,996. Method and apparatus for transmitting memory requests by transmitting portions of count data in adjacent words of a packet
24. 5,844,855. Method and apparatus for writing to memory components
25. 5,748,914. Protocol for communication with dynamic memory
26. 5,748,554. Memory and method for sensing sub-groups of memory elements
27. 5,680,361. Method and apparatus for writing to memory components
28. 5,657,481. Memory device with a phase locked loop circuitry
29. 5,606,717. Memory circuitry having bus interface for receiving information in packets and access time registers
30. 5,511,024. Dynamic random access memory system
31. 5,499,385. Method for accessing and transmitting data to/from a memory in packets
32. 5,499,355. Prefetching into a cache to minimize main memory access time and cache size in a computer system
33. 5,434,817. Dynamic random access memory system
34. 5,430,676. Dynamic random access memory system
35. 5,390,308. Method and apparatus for address mapping of dynamic random access memory
Of course sometimes companies had no Patent portfolio to cross license, and were forced to pay royalties. However, being producers themselves, the patent holders couldn't charge too much; corporate 'karma' prevented it - after all if they charged predatory royalties - somebody could do the same things to them.
Rambus on the other hand produces NOTHING; they exist only as a shell firm with a PR department, a legal department, a portfolio of patents, and little else. Because they produce nothing, companies like Rambus are not subject to cross licensing, and corporate 'karma' has no effect on them. The result is that a Rambus style firm is free to gouge on their royalty demands. The only thing which limits them is the threat of a counter suits by deep pocketed memory producers with the object of invalidating the Patents.
In effect companies like Rambus have the moral stature of email spam; both are a parasitic drain on a system which tends to hamper the productive.
I think that we are only seeing the tip of the Rambus future. Because Rambus makes nothing, their 'cost of goods sold' is zero; at least Microsoft has to pay for the blank CD's that they press. Thus, minus their expenses, everything that Rambus takes in is gravy. One of the things that I expect them to do in the future is use their money to acquire additional patents to suck even more blood out of the economy.
It is no accident that both spam and productionless, patent holding companies were dreamed up by lawyers. Neither is an approach that productive people would think of.
Is there a solution to parasitic patent behavior? I think that there is. In the United States patents can only be granted to individuals, NO COMPANY HAS EVER BEEN GRANTED A PATENT ON ANYTHING. Companies obtain patents by having them assigned to them. This is typically done by means of employment contracts which force inventors to assign their patent rights to the corporation. This puts into effect the first layer of parasitic behavior. Most abuse of the patent system occurs because of the assignment process; if the law were changed so that only an INDIVIDUAL could own a patent - as well as be granted one - most of the parasitic and bad consequences of the patent system would disappear.
You're whole argument is based on the simply untrue assumption that RAMBUS is ultimately a better solution than DDR. Well, I've got news for you: it ain't. The goal behind RAMBUS was to increase bandwidth and lower the pin count. They did both of these things, creating a 800 mhz memory module (actually 400 DDR) that uses a 16 bit bus. This delivers the same bandwidth as 200 mhz SDRAM would, since SDRAM uses a 64 bit bus. However, RAMBUS ran into a LOT of unexpected problems. Let's go over them all:
First of all, there's the whole latency issue. Basically, RAMBUS will always have higher latencies then SDRAM. This is a big part of the reason that RAMBUS can't seem to significantly outperform regular PC133 even though it should have 50% more bandwidth.
Then there's the memory limit issue. As one adds more and more RAMBUS memory, because of signalling issues (which I'll be the first to admit I don't completely understand) it becomes extremely difficult to keep it all working. The end result is that there is currently no way to have more than 512 megs of RAMBUS memory. This simply isn't enough for servers, and because of this even Intel, the big RAMBUS supporter, plans on using DDR memory for the server version of Willamette. It won't be long until 512 isn't enough for the desktop either. Do you really want to be stuck with this limit?
There's also the price issue. RAMBUS was supposed to be cheaper than SDRAM because it uses fewer pins, but things don't always work out the way they're supposed to. RAMBUS yeilds are horrible, and it is unlikely they will ever be as good as SDRAM yeilds. RAMBUS also requires a more expensive packaging and needs its own heatsink to deal with heat issues. The idea of ever putting RAMBUS in a laptop horrifies me. Also, because RAMBUS is yeilding so terribly 800 mhz modules are actually quite rare. Most RAMBUS being made is either 600 or 700 mhz, which compares quite pourly with PC133 considering that the 800 mhz modules can barely outperform it. There are also concerns that RAMBUS might not have much room to grow. Some video cards already use 200 mhz (non-DDR) SDRAM, and although these speeds are not mass-produced yet, the biggest limiting factor is motherboards which support it. SDRAM still has a lot of room to increase its frequency. RAMBUS doesn't.
Of course, during all this I was comparing RAMBUS to regular SDRAM, and RAMBUS doesn't compare very well at all. It wins a few points, but not many. Now, let's compare it to DDR SDRAM. DDR SDRAM is estimated to cost about 3% more to manufacture than regular SDRAM. 3%! RAMBUS costs at least 4-5 times as much! Now, PC2100 (133 mhz DDR, they rate it by the bandwidth and not the frequency for marketing reasons. Probably because they don't want the average consumer to be choosing between PC266 and PC800 not realizing what it means.) will offer more bandwidth than RAMBUS, still have the lower latencies of SDRAM, cost significantly less, and not be limited to 512 megs. Do you really want RAMBUS to win?
I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.
"That's right, I'm quoting myself."
-Upsilon
Even if this manages to survive, all it means is that manufacturers will rush the next generation of memory without patent problems into computers. It's happened before, and it'll happen again. I seem to recall IBM tried to squeeze the industry with Microchannel and Apple tried to squeeze with Firewire. The industry will survive.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Strictly speaking, this is all no longer capitalism. Capitalism is where the market forces prevail. Good, well marketed products succeed, where shoddy products don't grab the consumer heart, and so fail. Capitalism isn't such a bad thing really. It forces innovation (real innovation) and evolution. This, however is a corruption of capitalism. Law has been applied to stifle the growth aspect of the capitalist system. No longer do companies have to fight their competition for the best product, or the best angle on the product. They simply pay lawyers to 'nobble' the competition, and prevent them from competing. This nullifies the effect of market forces, as customers are no longer allowed to buy the best product from the person who finds the way to produce it at the most efficient cost. It all comes down to who has the most expensive lawyers that allows the public to buy what they think they want the public to buy. Other options become illegal (read 'unlicenced applications of patents'). Personally, I think capitalism is ok.. I think this bastardised hybrid is far from ok. A small dash of common sense and looking beyond the end of their noses and past sacrificing all for immediate gain would serve these companies in good stead. I can but keep my fingers crossed that they start to look this direction. Malk