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Rambus Files Antitrust Suit Against Memory Makers
bender647 writes "Forbes reports: 'Chip designer Rambus sued several major computer memory makers Wednesday, claiming they illegally conspired to limit production and raise prices in an effort to block widespread adoption of Rambus' technology.' Rambus believes that RDRAM was not the success it should have been because chip makers did not want to pay their royalties."
I'm sure this is a dumb question, but why does the price of RAM fluctuate? Hard drives and processors are getting continually cheaper yet I've seen memory jump up and down by almost 50% each way, and I don't see why.
Anybody not see this coming from a company that patents ideas coming from a industry meeting, slipped their proprietary IP into open standards, sued the manufacturers of their products, and generally behaved as a two year old in the ethics department?
Man, who would chose to work for this company?
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
Or can we at least have a "Litigation" section so it's off the main page?
``This is yet another example highlighting Rambus' pattern of using litigation as its only real business model,'' said Christoph Liedtke, an Infineon So this explains where SCO got their business model from... -A
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Rambus is accusing them of colluding to fix prices. The only novell aspect of their argument is that this wasn't to reap the higher profit margins but to force the market to adopt technology preferential to the manufactures not the market. That second part. I'm not so interested in.
Because price fixing is price fixing is price fixing. If Rambus can prove it let loose a smackdown. Particularly in North America. A smackdown so brutal and draconian, the member states of the WTO collectively crap themselves (the reverberations being at 82 cents above the lowest E flat). Either you want a market with price fixing or without it. I for one like voting with my wallet, perhaps other people are not so inclined.
especially when the "slightly less quality" performs better for a major portion of the market, Rambus sucks for gaming, alot of RAM is purchased for gaming (what you think I have a Gig of ram so i can open 250 copies of notepad with no swapfile?)
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
In its lawsuit, Rambus cites a series of e-mails dating from 1996 in which executives at Hynix, Siemens (nyse: SI - news - people ) and Micron (nyse: MU - news - people ) discussed...
Where in hell did they get those emails from? Did they fabricate them?
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
When they attended a technology conference--I don't remember the name--they essentially took notes and patented the ideas that were discussed.
Basically, they used the patent office to lay claim to other people's ideas, and have been making money off of them.
The FTC filed a complaint, but the judge ruled in Rambus's favor. From the article:
Though the FTC is appealing the decision, [the judge's] written opinion cited several instances of apparent collusion against Rambus.
Basically, Rambus whined that nobody was playing fair, and the judge took pity on them.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Oh, and "This is the world's smallest violin playing just for Rambus."
By this logic, Nintendo could sue Sony for luring gamers and developers away from the N64 to the PS1 because they didn't want to pay the costs of cartridges over CDs!
It's funny how companies turn against the supposed benefits of the free market when it stops working in their favour, isn't it?
If you design a widget that you think guarantees you a fortune, and then somebody comes up with a better and cheaper widget that everyone uses instead, then that's really tough shit on you. Innovate, not litigate.
You must think in Russian.
Rambus believes that RDRAM was not the success it should have been because chip makers did not want to pay their royalties.
You know, I think they may be onto something...
In all seriousness, this is exactly why it flopped: people didn't want to pay exorbitant pseudo-taxes to a single vendor. Of course, they do it all the time with Microsoft, but maybe there's something different about RAM. I don't know.
Too right.
The problem with RDRAM was that it was clocked very highly and therefore quite different from the other DRAMs out there. So it required a lot of learning on behalf of the memory companies to convert their processes to do such things. Also the high clock made signalling difficult due to interference I believe.
Whilst RDRAM was better suited for the P4, this was the time when the Athlon was at it's peak. That was SDRAM/DDR only so that had market pressure to resist RDRAM anyway!
RDRAM still has its uses - mainly on fixed motherboards like the PS2. It just isn't suited to socketed stuff like the current DDR technology is.
In the end, RDRAM cost TONS more and was simply not that much better (if at all) than the current PC-100/PC-133 SDRAM memories at the time.
Except that most people here have been denying that it was better, except in certain cases. And, in particular, they've been denying that it was better for gaming, which is were many of the rather high end $$$ go.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Seriously, "cheap but good enough" almost always manages to beat "expensive and techically superior." Apple might be an exception, but that's open to debate.
Um... as far as I can tell, the debate is pretty much over: Windows owns over 90% of the personal computer market, with Apple and Linux filling niche roles.
Windows = cheap but good enough.
Apple = pretty and technically superior, but expensive.
Linux = cheap and technically superior, but much harder to setup and use.
[ home ]
That's what I've always heard too, but exactly HOW high are the royalties? Best I could find was this PDF, which says in the middle of page 4, "Royaly rates range up to a maximum of approximately 2.5% for RDRAMs and a maximum of approximately 5% for logic ICs."
Prices for RDRAM were *way* more than 5% more than DDR... anyone else have something to site regarding royalty rates??
On a simple view... RAMBUS memory tech sux really hard...
When everyone makes parallel memory... RAMBUS comes and says: Serial is better... see? It's ram... it runs at 800Mhz... it's bloody fast!
And everyone else knows that a DDR 133 which costs a 10th of the price performes very nicelly indeed (not to mention the more modern 400DDR and the recently quad ones).
Go figure...
So they are greedy assholes too! They conspired, most multi-nationals probably do... So what?
The memory prices are rather high right now. I haven't read a single argument yet against specifically what they are arguing in this Anti-Trust case.
I think LCD manufacturers probably conspire too... As does the RIAA, MPAA, Auto manufacturers, etc. Some people are greedy assholes. I would like to have a light shined on this industry and learn more about some of the more nefarious practices of the industry...
Will someone argue the merits of _this_ case for those of us who are not enlightened?!?!?!?
The fact that Rambus owns some patents does not in any way obligate memory vendors to license those patents, or to produce any particular amount of product using them. If Rambus had a contract with a particular memory vendor, and the vendor failed to meet their obligations under the contract, Rambus would have grounds to sue them for breach of contract, but this is not an antitrust issue.
Believe it or not, Rambus corporation is likely no more unethical in their business practices as the DRAM manufacturers - see the Micron and Hynix squabble, with accompanying governmental levies and fines. Look to the fact that at least a few governments have cartel investigations on the books against these corporations.
Here is what can be stated most objectively:
-Rambus's RDRAM technology was, and is, technologically interesting
-The console gaming makers realized this and have used it extensively
-Intel designed the P4 around it - obviously there's some good ideas there
-Compared to conventional DRAM technology, RDRAM is unique in that it improves its latency characteristics with every generation. Have you guys read any technical documents about DDR and DDR2? DDR2 scales very poorly: latencies and timings get looser and looser while overall MHz speeds increment more and more slowly.
-To get any real benefit from DDR2 you need a dual-channel configuration which requires prohibitively complex board designs and more pcb layers on the mainboard. Compare this with RDRAM, with its lower pincount and simplified board design.
-Due to Rambus Inc's pariah status, Intel had to shy away from them. However, even Intel couldn't ignore the merits of Rambus technology and is developing a new DRAM tech suscpiciously similiar in nature to RDRAM: FB-DIMM.
One can find a good overview of FB-DIMM "fully buffered dual inline memory module" technology here:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15167
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15189
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15214
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15379
Peace
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
RDRAM tech may have been better (in theory), but the implementations available certainly weren't.
i820, anyone?
The only volume chipset I recall that was faster with RDRAM was the dual-channel i840 (I think that's the right number). It was only a smidge faster, and only for a short while before DDR boards caught back up. And it cost an arm and a leg and at least your neighbor's first-born.
Better, aye, but at too high a cost. Intel had contractual obligations to push RDRAM, but everyone else in the market saw an immature, litigious company asking a lot of money for marginally better tech which may or may not have panned out in the market. That's a lot of risk to assume for precious little gain. It's no wonder the memory makers didn't jump on the bandwagon wholeheartedly.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
If they were really concerned about their stockholders they would not have been shady about the FTC-Patent mess in the first place. They were trying to rig the game from the get go and now scream bloody murder when it blows up in their face. Whatever harm comes to the stockholders was caused by the senior staff and legal department at Rambus and by no one else. Half the reason they failed was because the market said the performance is acceptable, but the price is unreasonable. The only way this story could be any crazier is if they sued people who chose a (DDR) DRAM motherboard over their much more expensive product.
Every venture is a risk; they lost and need to accept it. Even if by some miracle they win, the market will not support them unless they come out with some amazingly fast and financially competitive technology.
Rambus believes that RDRAM was not the success it should have been because chip makers did not want to pay their royalties.
Well, they're probably right. They thought that they could corner the market and be the only show in town. They were wrong, people opted not to pay their royalties when their patent frenzy failed.
Companies chose to go with technologies that didn't include the Rambus tax. Tough shit for them. Live with it.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano