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Rambus Wins Case Against Infineon
rednoise writes "Yahoo is running a story about how a Federal Circuit Court in California (I think) has (unbelievably) ruled that RAMBUS did NOT intentionally mislead members of JEDEC when the committee was developing the SDRAM specification. RAMBUS' stock skyrocketed something like 57% on the news. This is very bad news for owners of computers."
Thank goodness that the Microsofts and the Rambuses in the world are protecting the freedom to innovate. Why, if they ewre taken down, people would be forced to buy things from smaller companies which as we all know are totally incapable of innovation.
Now I'm going to McDonalds for a delicious cheeseburger.
The company's stock soared on the news, rising $54.75, or 57 percent, to close at $11.69 on Nasdaq.
Ah, Yahoo.
You might consider reading the article a little more carefully. It's being sent back for "reconsideration." Nor did the article say that the court found they did NOT perpetrate a fraud... it just said that it wasn't proven that they did.
So, it's neither good news nor bad news for anyone but Rambus, since they're not dead in the water. Infeneon will have to keep going.
In a nutshell, Rambus thinks that they own (at least part of) the SDRAM specs. When their own RAM flopped due to being too expensive and not offering enough performance, they resorted to suing just about every RAM manufacturer around for using "their" SDRAM spec. Mind you, Rambus did aid JEDEC in defining the spec, but, as I understand it, lied about the availability of some patents that Rambus had so they could be incorporated into the "open" SDRAM spec.
As soon as Rambus's real business began to suffer, they turned around and said "Actually, no, we changed our mind and now you DO have to pay us huge sums of money to use this spec that has now become an industry standard".
So, it's bad for computer users because Rambus is going to levy huge "royalty" fees against other RAM manufacturers, and that cost is gonna get passed right back to us, the customers. Say goodbye to the $12 128MB chip...
Arseholes to 'em, I says.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Can I bum a sig? I left mine at the office.
I can't really say. So far, my PA-RISC workstations's performance has not been impacted by this ruling. Further reports as events warrent...
The EETimes article on this story has (besides a lot more meat) a bit of an insight:
"Having framed the duty of disclosure in the above terms, the court concluded that Rambus did not breach its duty as to the SDRAM standard because none of the claims in its patents and pending patent applications reads on that standard," [legal analyst] Balto added.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Why is RDRAM a bad thing for computer users? I think promoting better technology is a good thing for users. If people promoted the better technology instead of the cheaper one, companies couldn't dump their obsolete products on the market in order to decrease sales of the better technology. If people bought a product based on its quality, we would have things like organic LED displays instead of truly obsolete LCD screens and CRT monitors.
I don't know where to stand on the issue of who had prior art, but I have talked to people on both sides and they seem to both have valid arguments. I don't believe any of the companies involved are boyscouts. What I am interseted in is which is the better technology. Obviously, if you look at the specs of Rambus, you will see that although DDR 266 is just a lower stepping of PC133 Ram and the bus is double-pumped. Rambus, on the other hand, has a lot more going for it. Its bus has less traces and allows you to more easily have more than one channel. It is also capable of shutting off portions of itself not in use.
If you look at a Tom's Hardware article It mentions that there is a limitation with using parallel designs due to uncontrolled impedence.
Not to mention that memory benchmarks available on many sites show that DDR can't continiously maintian its bandwidth like Rambus can. Instead, its bandwidth is spurty.
Also, Rambus has many new things on the backburner.
Rambus memory has also become much cheaper. I believe in leaving the decision of whether or not
Rambus infringed on patents to the courts and going for what is the best technology so you can give it a boost. What holds back RDRAM in terms of price is that there isn't enough being sold.
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> but the effect of Rambus royalties is insignificant at best.
Ah yes, the "it only costs us a couple of bucks, why worry" argument. So, when DRM laws get passed, and all the DACs on your sound card have to support DRM and they start costing $7 per unit on the sound card instead of a couple of cents, don't worry? And the same in the CD/DVD drive.. And then the video card makers find out about one of the partners in the AGP spec have a patent on something or other and video cards cost $15 more for "royalties", and then the network cards, and so on and so on, and then all together that brand new PC costs an extra $100 as a result of legislation and royalties, we just should suck it up because it's only a bit here and a bit there?
>I read a while ago about the cost of RDRAM. The cost premium has not so much to do with Rambus royalties as it does low yields during fabrication.
So that's the buyer's fault that they have an inherently less efficient production process? And almost nobody was paying Rambus royalties, because almost nobody besides a couple of Rambus' best friends was/is making RDRAM anyway, since DDR SDRAM is cheaper and faster.
>The story mentioned that in the total cost of a 128 or 256 MB RIMM, some 3-5 dollars was the royalty.
>This was also when memory prices were significantly higher per meg.
The price of a DIMM on a per meg basis will not have any effect on the royalies that go to RAMBUS as a result. If a DIMM cost $25 before and $30 now, when its price would have dipped to $10, it'll still cost $15.
> Maybe $3-5 pisses you off a whole lot, but in exchange for great memory design (RDRAM is damn good for P4) I'd say its a small price to pay.
>I didn't here you complaining that Philips owns the CD standard.
Maybe that's because Philips didn't sit on a council to decide what the next audio system to replace cassette tapes was going to be, secretly patent a whole pile of technology around CDs, then push everyone to adopt CDs, wait a few years for CDs to become firmly entrenched in the marketplace, bring out their own SuperCD(TM) format, watch it tank, and then turn to Sony and all the others who used the "jointly developed" CD standard for all of their devices and go "Hey guys, we've got this patent we never told you about on the CD format to do with X. As a result you all owe us $5 a player. Large bills preferred. Thanks."
No. Instead Philips developed the standard themselves with Sony's help and both licensed it to everyone, up front, with clear and open terms . And, Philips is rather adamant about defending the standard as well. All of these "copy protected" audio discs aren't allowed to use the "Compact Disc" logo, you'll notice. Philips won't let them.
You have to wait for the second posting of this news, at least. Just be a little patient.
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Maybe if we would have slowed the pace, not tried to jump start the PC industry with clock speed wars and bus bandwidth statistics, and as an industry concentrated on elegant solutions, innovative design and bringing something truly new to the consumer the market for PCs and software would not have stagnated so brutally? It's more than obvious that the current approach failed.
The massive interest in the first wave of iMacs proves that consumers are hungry for something new, but marketing clockspeed and Apple's insane need to keep prices high killed that movement. Maybe a glimmer of hope from Small Form Factor or Mini-ITX (which I sit and type from at the moment)?
What the hell does this have to do with Rambus? Rambus is part of the brute force/clockspeed eccentric computing industry. They have zero interest in the customer or industry partners, just in money (I know, I'm a capitalist pig at heart too, but there's more to it then that). When their product doesn't sell, they sue their partners, partners gained under false pretense.
So would the industry be better off if we were just getting to 2gHz? If DDR was just taking off in the market place? If Microsoft concentrated on fixing Windows 95 instead of pushing out incremental upgrades every 18-24 months? Would processor upgrades feel really substantial if the architecture were more elegant and devs more concious of performance? If Linux devs stopped trying to emulate the Windows desktop and feature creep and tried to break away from the desktop metaphor? Would it be a better industry (and would the consumer still be interested) if Apple had 30% market share and users really had alternatives?
Yes, the market would be more fragmented and support would be more challenging. Yes, 3gHz is cool, but who needs it? Yes, XP is better than 95, but could we have gotten there in 2 upgrades instead of 5, and caught the security holes along the way. How cool would the Linux desktop be if KDE was built from the ground up not to be like Windows (flame retardent boxers activate!)?
We would certainly have fewer 800lb gorillas, and a more interesting landscape. I think so...