Rambus Claims It Was Price-Fixing Target

conq writes "BusinessWeek reports on the latest developments in the Rambus/Micron saga over pricefixing." From the article: "One e-mail, dated June 5, 2001, from Micron Vice-President Linda Turner to other Micron employees was in response to worries about prices on DDR-DRAM that had been falling. 'No problem!,' Turner wrote. 'We want DDR to explode in the marketplace so have actually been requesting Infineon, Samsung, and Hynix to lower their DDR pricing to help it become a standard (and drive Rambus away completely).'"

Comments

Or more likely...

[LordKazan]

... it was the fact that Rambus is SHIT

"PC800 RDRAM, which operated at 800 MHz and delivered 1600 MB/s of bandwidth over a 16 bit bus using a 184 pin RIMM form factor"

"Compared to other current standards, Rambus shows significantly increased latency, heat output, manufacturing complexity, and cost.[citation needed] PC800 RDRAM operated with a latency of 45ns, compared to only 7.5ns for PC133 SDRAM."

then squashed by

"DDR SDRAM, introduced in 2000, operated at an effective clockspeed of 266 MHz and delivered 2100 MB/s over a 64-bit bus using a 184 pin DIMM form factor."

not to mention needing CRIMMS or whatever they called the terminators

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDRAM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR_SDRAM

Re:Price fixing...technically?

[nickname225]

I am a lawyer - and yes you are wrong. Colluding with a nominal competitor to lower prices to force a 3rd competitor out of business or to drop a product line is anti-competitive, both legally and actually. The concern is that once the colluding parties have succeeded in driving the competitor out of the market - they can divide it up between them and price as they please. Like many laws - some portions of the antitrust laws are designed to avoid the creation of potentially abusive situations. So while on the surface colluding to lower prices seems like a public good - in fact it is potentially a large public evil. This was a tactic used to great effect by John D. Rockefeller - Standard Oil would open a gas station across the street from an independent station - and lower prices untilt he other station went out of business and then raise prices. This sourt of actual abuse shows the logic behind the antitrust laws.