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Rambus Files Antitrust Suit Against Memory Makers

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the companies-based-upon-litigation-other-than-sco dept.

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."

9 of 398 comments (clear)

  1. Re:high prices by MoonBuggy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  2. Re:insane by ePhil_One · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Ok, so thier trying to have other companies pay for thier own stupidity?

    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.
  3. Make no mistake... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Make no mistake... by anachattak · · Score: 3, Interesting
      This argument makes sense. Without getting into the whole debate on the merits/drawbacks of the Rambus memory design (which I don't REALLY understand and haven't researched), the case seems to come out like this:

      1. Intel decides to adopt the Rambus memory design for its chipsets.
      2. Memory manufacturers, knowing how big the Intel market is, realize that unless they start developing the new memory chips, they'd be left out in the cold.
      3. The memory manufacturers realize that the only way to get out from under the influence of Intel's adoption of rambus is to move Intel away from the adopted technology, through collusion, overpricing and killing market demand for the new technology.
      4. The collusion works - high prices kill demand for the rambus chips, Intel moves away from rambus to cheaper memory with higher demand and lower prices, and Rambus and its licenses are left out in the cold.

      Let me just say, that if I was in Rambus' shoes and the memory manufacturers had colluded against me like that, I'd sue them too. That's the whole reason we have laws protecting against unfair trade practices!!!

  4. Cited EMAILS?! by Short+Circuit · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

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  5. Amazing... by Millennium · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  6. Re:insane by zoombat · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Two technologies, one free, the other having outrageous royalties...

    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??

  7. thick as thieves by l33t-gu3lph1t3 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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" ----------
  8. Failed business model lawsuits are funny. by Lord+Kano · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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