Slashdot Mirror
Rambus Production Capacity Switched to Make SDRAM
Jon Rabone writes " NEC, Japan's largest chipmaker is halting Rambus production to make SDRAM.
Both NEC and Samsung are to switch production over to SDRAM - sounds to me like RAMBUS could be in danger of dying the death, after Intel's latest problems with the Camino chipset. At least we might see SDRAM prices fall again.
"
They better make some 64 Mb's Man those prices :-(
Need I say more?
Jack
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
Alex Bischoff
---
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
This decision, and the corresponding drop in SDRAM prices, was made inevitable by my purchase of a 128 meg upgrade for my server *just yesterday*.
---------------------
---------------------
John 3:16 - God's Public License
The odd thing is that the usually more expensive venues to buy RAM (best buy, comp usa, etc) were as lately as a week ago offering rebates on RAM that made it about a buck a meg. Computer shows which usually have the better deal were charging 100 bucks for a 64 MB dimm the same weekend. Kind of strange. Of course, the number of people who may actually see those rebates could be very small....
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I guess these businesses can't wait forever for Intel to get their act together. They seem to have been having a rough time of it lately. Is AMD planning on using this Rambus type chip by any chance or is that Intel specific stuff.
Good is never enough, when you dream of being great!
This makes me just as happy as Linux's market share growth. I love seeing Intel get humiliated like this! For years I've been saying that Intel is the MS of chip manufacturing, and now they've shot themselves in the foot. It's about damn time!
Maybe Win2000 will be the Rambus of Microsoft?
sounds to me like rambus could die just cause most of the manufactures are switching there production lines to make sdram...good maybee ram prices will go down
As always, it's best to look at all the options before you buy stuff -- don't always just head on over to pricewatch and think you've gotten a great deal.
- A.P. (speaking of great deals, checked the prices for 18 gig U2W scsi drives lately?)
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Now hopefully I'll be able to afford the RAM I need for my new system before X-mas.
It's always the way isn't it? RAM stays so cheap for so long, then I finally start building my system and prices go through the roof. Then, as they're starting to drop again, Taiwan has an earthquake, pushing RAM prices up further (Even if they haven't peaked because of that, they will).. Just perfect. And I refuse to buy RAM for more than a buck a meg.
argh...
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Actually, I totally disagree with this statement for this year
The reason the prices got so high this year was because of the quake in Taiwan. Most of the chips that you put in your PC were manufactured in Taiwan, and a lot of the major chip manufacturers suffered serious losses in the quake and the aftermath.
Although many of the chipmakers did come out alright, just the fear of the chip shortage drove prices sky-high.
This is not unlike what happens in other industries, for example oil. A few months ago, I could put gas in my car for less than a dollar a gallon. The first time it has ever happened in my life. For a while, I could even find it for $.93US a gallon. But then there was a teeny-tiny little oil scare, (thanks Saddam!) and BAM! oil prices sky-rocket. It costs me $1.25US per gallon now, if I'm lucky!
I do agree that prices tend to fluctuate a bit every year, but that's to be expected. Prices on most commodities fluctuate according to some calendar. This year is not a typical fluctuation for memory prices. Or any other chip prices that begin to take a rise of 50%-150%.
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
A while back, The Register reported that "Samsung shut down Rambus production and shifted to SDRAM production until Intel can come up with a new Camino launch date".
-------
Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
From looking at other posts, I guess memory in the US is still dirt cheap (at least compared to our prices in the UK)
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
However. SDRAM won't suffice forever as it can't (disclaimer: as far as I know) be overclocked much higher than it already is (140 MHz is the highest I've read about before stability issues arise). RDRAM on the other hand can run up to 800 MHz. The heat sync looks rather cute, but the memory is tragically flawed by it's miniscule 16 bit bus (as opposed to the 64 bit SDRAM bus to the front side system bus).
Rambus really needs to go back to the drawing board on this before they bring it back to market, if it is ever given another chance. Intel in partnering with Rambus was seeing Large dollar signs in an unending stream of royalty payments on every future RDRAM RIMM sold for many years to come. Chalk it up to another case of greed overriding sensibility.
we were doing just fine before that...we should trade memory on the commodities market
JediLuke
JediLuke
-Do or Do Not, There is no Try
wonder when that will happen.
RAM prices were going insanely high even before the quake. The quake sent them up a notch, but I recall seeing 128MB DIMM's at Fry's Electronics for $200 even before the Taiwan quake hit. Hopefully, NEC's switch back to SDRAM will bring them back to the $65-$100 price range we saw before.
Not so. I was following the market closely before during and after the quake. I used corsair PC 133 128 MB as a marker, as it uses Micron DRAM which is not produced in Taiwan, and in no way would be effected by the quake (it also happend to be the brand I choose and now own, due to it's superior quality). Here is a timeline of the price spikes:
I chose direct.multiwave.com (wholesaler) as my test bed.
Monday (prior to quake): $297
Sept 22nd (day of the quake, wednesday): $297
Sept 24th $297
Sept 29th: $358
Oct 7th: $372
So you see, the prices were already at $300 before the quake. The subsequent rises could be attributed to Micron raising the price of DRAM to over $16 after the 22th, the day of the quake.
If anyone was having an argument with themselves whether to get a K--er, Athlon or a 133MHz PIII, I think this pretty much eliminates the viability of the 133MHz PIII.
"Even genius needs a competent technique."--Robert Fripp
I heard from an unreliable source (a slashdot comment some time ago) that RAMBUS was pointless in systems with busses around 100MHz... that it only really shone at 200MHz... which coincidentally was the bus speed of the K7. Since RamBUS was an Intel technology, they were inadvertently helping a competitor by promoting this technology.
Does anyone care to confirm or refute this?
I hate seeing unintelligent remarks about Intel and rambus. Yes the Camino chipset is having problems. But Rambus wasn't invented by Intel, they just took the initiative to use the technology in their chipsets. Rambus stock has reflected the problem. I believe Intel has realized that industry is not ready for Rambus. There may have been a point where Intel directed industry but it isn't that way anymore. Although Rambus probably won't make a big debut with Camino, it probably won't die. Right now there are no other alternatives after SDRAM. So eventually Rambus will make it into the market. Just not at this point in time...
over here. Pricing Ram a few days ago I could find no better deal than your $317 /128mb. Intel sucketh Earthquakes sucketh, but not as much as Intel
Only this time it looks like Beta gets to win! IIRC, Beta was the superior video tape technology, but VHS had the muscle of Sony behind it, so it won eventually, despite its technical inferiority. For a while, I feared the same would happen with Rambus: it's truly a crappy RAM arch, offering little to no performance gains (in some cases, losses) while bringing sky-high prices, proprietarty design and royalties to Rambus. But it has Intel trying to push it through...
Lucky for us, the RAM manufacturers, motherboard manufacturers, IHV's (look at Micron's decision to dump Intel chipsets), and best of all, CONSUMERS, have figured out that Intel and Rambus are trying to screw us here, and we won't stand for it.
The day DDR SDRAM is available at a reasonable price, the last nail will be in Rambus' coffin!
MoNsTeR
over here. Pricing Ram a few days ago I could find no better deal than your $317 /128mb --but then again, there was no VAT stinger. Intel sucketh Earthquakes sucketh, but not as much as Intel .
Just to be redundant, I can confirm this, about three weeks before the quake, I went to go buy an SDRAM, the place I went to was out of stock... the next weekend, prices had doubled and were still climbing. Many companies in my area refused to sell or carry RAM, then the quake hit.
I heard from a somewhat reliable source that this has to do with a major SDRAM manufacturer going bankrupt. I haven't been able to confirm this through any channels though. I suppose with all the competition and the economic crisis in Asia, even a high volume manufacturer of SDRAM can go bankrupt... it makes sense, but again, I have no confirmation of this story.
From pricewatch.com, as of about 10 minutes ago;
PC133 256MB $579 to $ 749 - $2.26 to $2.93 per meg.
PC133 128MB $252 to $ 298 - $1.97 to $2.33 per meg.
PC100 512MB $999 to $2250 - $1.95 to $4.39 per meg.
PC100 256MB $481 to $ 564 - $1.88 to $2.20 per meg.
PC100 128MB $231 to $ 253 - $1.80 to $1.98 per meg.
PC100 64MB $117 to $ 131 - $1.83 to $2.05 per meg.
PC100 32MB $ 47 to $ 73 - $1.47 to $2.28 per meg.
Method: All data in $ (USD) from the first 15 prices reported.
Averages rounded to the nearest cent. Quality and type not
factored in.
Alright! Now maybe I can actually afford some decent PC-100 sdram. Aren't we soooo glad!!!
I hate these 'technology switchover's It's nice to see us getting better tech, but it's so inconvenient.
Great.. Now I'll just sit tight and watch the chip prices fall.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
Actually, AMD recently took a Rambus licence. Which only made sense once they had a system chip architecture (licensed from VIA, possibly a competitor now that VIA has bough the high-end Cyrix stuff). Clearly, the Rambus retreat is based on Intel's inability to get their new i820 chipset working properly. They were counting on this to make a big splash for Christmastime, and so anyone making Direct Rambus likely has stockpiles already. Knowing that's not going to happen, it makes perfect sense they're running SDRAM now, especially with the rise in SDRAM pricing. After all, the main allure of Direct Rambus for the memory vendors was higher margins. You can get that now, at least for a little while, with SDRAM, and there's no sense in making more Rambus now. Rambus itself has been proven in the consumer maket -- the Nintendo 64 uses the original 8-bit Rambus design, at 500MHz (technically, 250MHz DDR). The interesting thing is that Intel can't use Rambus anyway, now; they're priming the pumps for some future migration. One 16-bit Direct Rambus at 800MHz (technically, 400MHz DDR) peaks out at 1600MB/s, but a 100MHz P6 bus peaks out at 800MB/s. Sure, they'll run it up to 133MHz in the i820 (VIA has a 133MHz P6 bus chipset already), but it's not something you need Rambus for. AMD, on the other hand, has this hot EV6 bus. They're running it at 200MHz, but it's already going 400MHz in Alpha machines. It's kind of silly to run this on a PC100 bus. So AMD can actually take full advantage of one Direct Rambus channel. In fact, if they want to boost I/O performance, two channels wouldn't be out of line. Of course, AMD could get to a real 200MHz data rate using 100MHz DDR SDRAM (supposedly ALi is doing an EV6 chipset to support this). So they don't really need Direct Rambus, either. Unless they're planning a 400MHz FSB migration, too...
-Dave Haynie
I know of yet another RAM technology coming out. It has the benefits of Rambus but not the drawbacks. The company coming out with it also likely won't be charging licensing fees and the manufacturing cost is comparible to SDRAM. Not only that, but expect non-Intel chipsets to appear supporting this standard. Intel really shot themselves in the foot with Rambus.
beta was sony's proprietary vcr format and yes, it was better in some ways.
the reasons it lost to vhs were primarily:
1. sony wanted a buttload in license fees
2. sony would not allow pornographic movies to be distributed on beta
3. vhs was an open standard, which anyone could build to, royalty free.
4. porn producers didn't have to run their product by sony's corporate censors
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
The prices isn't that bad. If you care to take a look backwards in time, the prices nowadays are extremely cheap. I remember forking out $200 for 4 new megabytes of RAM 6 years ago. And - remember after that epoxy fabric in .. was it taiwan burned some .. 5-6 years ago? The prices was $200 for *one* megabyte of ram at the worst.
So, this isn't *expensive*. It's just 'bad luck' that you didn't buy when ram was a tad cheaper.
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
...and always have.
If you're in that area on a Saturday, check out the computer fair just off TCR. It's held in a hotel on the first side street to the right, just up from the Oxford Street/TCR junction. (Can't be more accurate 'cos it's 18 months since I was there last)
Good range and prices, and one set of guys who test all memory in front of you before you take it away.
This sig left unintentionally blank.
Imagine for a moment that a catastrophe destroyed *all* the memory production capacity except that from a single company. By your logic, that one company's prices shouldn't be affected by the disaster. Of course, that cannot be.
If the quake affected Micron's competition it affected Micron's market. If it affected Micron's market, it stands to affect Micron's prices.
The reality of markets is, of course, far more complicated than your argument (and mine) would have it be. Even a credible prediction of a quake in Taiwan would affect prices in the markets in which Taiwan is a major player.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
CPU prices don't dip very low, then skyrocket 300+% in a few months. Mid july 128 meg of pc100 sdram was $70. Current pricewatch quote is $229.
My understanding is that RAM prices began to rise because several of the major RAM manufacturers were 'retooling' to go from 64bit chips to 128bit chips. During this period, prices rose to slow the sale of existing RAM, as apposed to the potential nightmare of running out (As well as to exploit a situation and make more money). The quake in Taiwan only exasperated the problem, because the only major players that hadn't begun retooling were in (you guessed it) Taiwan. And of course, Christmas is coming and that always drives the price of electronics up.
"Inspire me! Tell me it cannot be done!"
Nuff said. mark@gt2k.com
After reading Tom's in-depth analysis of RAMBUS vs SDRAM months ago, I concluded that RAMBUS was a zombie duck...
Thanks Tom, for getting it right *once again*
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Hell, $1.25 is cheap. It's running $1.69 here now :(
Ender
Nothing to see here
Not only that, but acto all the reports I've seen, the quake only downed about 10% of production, and they expected to be back at full production in about 2 weeks.
:)
Worst price fluctuation I saw was 128mb PC100 going from $103 to $480. Where do I find a bank that will figure 10% interest like this?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
FYI
Beta is still in use in the "Industry"
Hello! I am Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die
VHS the battle because the Porn industry supported it. Why do you think the Video CD failed? You would be hard pressed to find any recent North American porn on it. Asia is a differnt story all-together. You can look through any old smut mags that had ads in the back for video's (like Huster, Cheri) and if you count up how many betas can you find as compaired to VHS's? (and don't count the places that send you a slide projector or a reel to reel projector...)
Lets face it, in porn quality doesn't really matter, as long as your not asking your self the question "Is that a nipple or an anus?"
I think you misunderstand. The point of my last point was to establish that the earthqake was not the sole cause of the sharp spike in SDRAM prices. I think that point was made. I cited micron as an example because Micron DRAM was, is, and has been available in abundance, so it serves as a useful indicator.
There are obviously a lot more issues at work here, and a lot more foreign companies making DRAM besides the US and Taiwan. NEC is in Japan, and Samsung is in Korea for instance.
The reality of markets is, of course, far more complicated than your argument (and mine) would have it be. Even a credible prediction of a quake in Taiwan would affect prices in the markets in which Taiwan is a major player.
I wasn't my intention to do a full analysis of the market forces that led to the exponential rise in DRAM prices. I was meerly offering the results of a small case study. If you look further in this thread, the myriad reasons for the DRAM price increases are addressed.
A lot of you might already know this, but if you've been cursed into having to buy SDRAM right now, probably the cheapest prices you'll find will be at the office supply stores. Okay, I'll wait for you to stop laughing... yes, Staples, OfficeMax, Office Depot, etc. all have pretty cheap SDRAM at the moment. Basically RAM isn't exactly a hot seller at these stores (you probably hadn't considered buying it there until just now) so their inventory is a couple months old. If you've been following RAM prices lately, you'll know that a couple months makes all the difference in the world in terms of price. Most stores, unless their inventory guys are really on the ball, will still be charging the price from three months ago for the RAM they got three months ago. Even if you don't need RAM, you can make a real killing on Ebay this way.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
NEC and Samsung are having financial difficulties.
The Taiwanese quake has drastically reduced the output from the Taiwanese SDRAM's manufacturers, thus making the price of SDRAM much more expensive - and in turn, making SDRAM a much more profitable venture for financial troubling companies like NEC and Samsung to switch their manufacturing lines.
If the above is not enough, the marketplace has spoken. RAMBUS is too overly hyped - for the price difference of nearly 50% (and more) you get the performance hike of less than 10% (or less) - and who wants to spend more of their money for such lousy improvements?!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Rember folkes, the Playstation 2 uses Rambus memory.
.sig
Hope this doesn't affect production costs of the console if less people are manufacturing Rambus memory.
----
This post has no