Rambus Gets Toshiba To Sign Patent Concession 130
Modular writes " This press release Toshiba Signs Patent License Agreement With Rambus For SDRAM & DDR SDRAM Memory and Controllers surprised me. I didn't know that Rambus held patents for SDRAM and DDR SDRAM. It seems like they hold cards on both sides of the SDRAM vs RDRAM issue. Toshiba already had an agreement to produce RDRAM. Did they sign this to strengthen Rambus claims to SDRAM technology? Are these patents pending and contested by other memory manufacturers?" Check out the tech report for an analysis of this - it doesn't look good, I fear.
Re:You Can Thank Intel (Score:1)
Re:Help me out here... (Score:1)
If Rambus really has a valid patent on this (which I hope they don't) then you're stuck either paying royalties or not using DDR-SDRAM. I personally find it hard to believe that Rambus has patents that give them control over who can manufacture parts that are using an open standard.
Re:Toshiba and the floppy drive lawsuit... WAP too (Score:1)
Phone.com and others are fighting this questionable patent.
There seems to be a pattern with Toshiba caving in while other companies fight.
Re:This paradigm exists for a good reason. (Score:2)
Yes, I've read the link to magram.
This is a non-technical article describing what they *hope* magram will accomplish when the technology matures.
It is *not* a description of what they actually have working.
There are many, many interesting memory technologies in this stage of development. They only become relevant to debates when engineering prototypes with decent density and speed are produced.
Re:You Can Thank Intel (Score:1)
Re:What's wrong with that? (Score:1)
Also, stuff like patents and copyright make nothing into something. Until recently, the nothing was printed on something, but now the nothing can be sent over the Internet without the something, and the something is worthless without the nothing. So now the nothing must be considered something even though nothing costs nothing to reproduce and distribute.
Re:Rambus' patent (Score:2)
RAMBUS is older then people think. It was around in 1992. I think the Alpha predates it by a little.
However the EV6 memory bus, the part that you think may be prior art is fairly new (1995 at the earylest? Not to market until '97 or '98?). As others have said using both edges of the clock isn't innovatave, RAMBus was just the first to use and try to patent it for use with memory.
Hell, VHDL will try to do it for you by accident if you just ask for "CLOCK events" not "CLOCK event and clock high" (or low).
Re:Curious happenings (Score:1)
But sdram has been produced for years with no lawsuits or harrasment from Rambus.
And GIFs were created in 1987 (hence the 87a version). But Unisys didn't start defending their LZW patent [gnu.org] until 1995, when the format was well established.
-- LoonXTall
Re:RAM shortages (Score:1)
And do you know why there are earthquakes in Taiwan? Have you compared it to the NASA-sponsored tests of fissionable-core satellites in a top secret military facility in Nevada? They match exactly. NASA is using satellites to attempt to prevent computers from becoming faster, so more and more people will have to use Beowulf Clusters. This is in an attempt to make Beowulf Clustering technology more available for widespread use, so that terrorists can use it to plan an assassination of the President. NASA triggers Presidential Assassination by use of Death Satellites! You heard it here first!
Why was it granted at all? (Score:2)
Oh, but it's so different to use it in on a memory bus vs. a datapath bus on a chip. Geeze. What innovation. Thank you, oh US Pattent Office, for protecting their valuable IP and promoting innovation!
And that's not even to mention the stunning achievement of using a Delay Locked Loop! Oh my, who ever would have thought of that! No one, except of course Rambus Inc.
Sorry, this is turning into a rant. Suffice to say, this stinks, and it stinks a lot. (now to go buy some Rambus stock... )
Hurts Intel Not (Score:1)
How is this? If your scenario is true, Intel still makes money both ways, either through selling CPUs, or SDRAM license fees.
Consider a lemonade stand that sells both lemonade and lemonade recipes. I would much rather sell the recipe. "Mash up some lemons and add sugar", than make the lemonade.
Don't give up hope... (Score:4)
...At least not quite yet.
Just because Toshiba folded doesn't mean that everyone is going to. RAMBUS's claims of controlling DDR SDRAM are totally bogus. It is and always has been an open standard which many companies have invested a lot of money it. They are not going to just sit by and watch RAMBUS take it over for the sole purpose of destroying DDR SDRAM and forcing everyone to buy RAMBUS. This is definately going to be disputed by a lot of players in the memory market, and I think that any court would have to realize that RAMBUS doesn't have a case.
So why did Toshiba fold? If it had been Micron or somebody similar, I would have to say that things would be looking quite bad. But Toshiba has never been a big DDR-SDRAM supporter in the first place. It is possible that they cut some deal with RAMBUS because RAMBUS is desperately trying to establish some kind of justification for a future campaign against other memory makers. This could serve as a precedent, or at least some kind of evidence, for legal action. However, if that's all RAMBUS has to go on it's not going to be enough
I'm not saying that this is a good thing. Not by any means. However, I don't think RAMBUS will be able to stop DDR-SDRAM from becoming popular by doing this. At worst they might be able to delay it for a while and increase prices a bit. Considering how incredibly non-competitive RAMBUS is and how many memory manufacturers are simply sick of Intel and RAMBUS trying to force them to use what they consider to be a poor technology, I don't think anyone is going to give up on DDR-SDRAM anytime soon.
Type for a paradigm shift (Score:5)
We've become sloppy and trained to the notion that memory should be divided into segments varying by speed, size, volatility, and cost. We all spend months in college or in the field learning about the subtle differences between L1 caching, L2 caching, main memory, hard drive memory, ROM, and the trillion variations of RAM. We don't see the forest for the trees: this model of data management is the single most crucial hindrance to the advancement of computer science in our entire industry.
I for one would love to see a technology like the magram [tekpress.com] become viable through hard research and buckets of funding. Can you imagine the virtues of a system that could boast cheap, fast, large, and non-volatile memory in one consolidated chunk?
Imagine how intelligent an OS design such as the orthogonally persistent EROS operating system [eros-os.org] would become if the distinction between disk and memory were eliminated at low cost.
So, while I fear the short term repercussions of what it would mean for a company as shoddy as RAMBUS to gain broad control over the hardware market, in the long term such a development might just shake us out of our doldrums. Which can only be a good thing.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Re:RAM shortages (Score:1)
Re:You Can Thank Intel (Score:1)
uh, i feel sick.
how many of you saps have been burned by intel and are wondering if these assholes will deliver a working rambus memory controller this century?
"beautifully"? maybe if you read only business news everyday, but not if you know chips and boards.
Re:Rambus' patent (Score:4)
To understand the significance (or lack thereof) in RamBus having patents on both sides of the SDRAM/RDRAM divide, you have to understand the outlook of the Japanese patent system (both its examiners and users)
In Japan, companies tend to patent much smaller details and modifications than are considered patentable in, say, the US. If you patent an "iridium-based' lightbulb, you can expect other companies to patent 'iridium based' bulbs with different bases, shapes, colors, multiple filaments, higher output, lower voltage, etc. "Iridium filament bulb with bayonet attachent for use in battery-powered flashlights" or "Iridium filament stage lights" would not be considered patentable in most of Europe or the US, but I've seen exactly this sort of patent on special bulbs in Japan.
Before WWII, this allowed japanese manufacturers to efectively bypass international patents in the domestic Japan market: "Maybe GE has the patent on that bulb, but we have the patent on green ones!" This would hold up in a Japanese court -- not that many companies tried to enforce their rights in Japanese courts back then. it wasn't a major market, and "Made in Japan" meant cheap and disposable.
In time, The Japanese system led to a strangling network of interlocking patents. Any big company could push you to license your patents, else they'd threaten to enforce the myriad tiny patents they or their corporate allies ('Kureitsu' relations is 'schoolyard politics') held to paralyze you or block your use of your own patent.
Result, lots of sharing and intertwined relationships, which is, of course, how the Japanese preferred to do business, anyway.
Ask anyone who tried to open a Japanese market (or business presence) in the 70's/80's. The culture shock was like a 2x4 to the head. It felt like socially condoned fraud, theft, monopolism, -- and a lot of words I can't print here. Comparisons to the Mafia were common (behind closed doors)
This is simply business-as-usual in Japanese business. It's not corruption or even scheming, it's their culture. "The nail that protrudes must be hammered down" is one of their most famous proverbs, and many of their well-accepted (by society in general) applications of it would be megabuck civil rights violations here.
It's like a Soviet and an American arguing economics in the 50's -- the premises are simply so different that you can't make a single logical step without considering them
Re:Not as much a problem with patents... (Score:1)
Re:Type for a paradigm shift (Score:1)
Seriously, there are lots of MS employees reading and posting on slashdot. I really have to give these guys credit for being here as many posts make fun of Microsoft employees ("if Windows source code is released many 'real' coders will die laughing" and that sort of bullshit). Very mature and professional people if you ask me.
Re:1st non-1st p0s7! (Score:1)
I just don't understand the argument for differentiating between software patents and any other type of patent. When software vendors complain about piracy, they claim huge expenditures on research and development. I think their claims are true. I'm sure Microsoft spends plenty on research and development. Why is software any less expensive to develop than anything else?
The economics of software DEVELOPMENT (as opposed to software sales or distribution) is exactly the same as the economics of the development of any other kind of intellectual property. Research expenditures become wildly inflated because decision-makers plan their spending according to what they think their net income will be. The higher the anticipated net income, the more lavish their spending. Since intellectual property laws create artificially high profit margins, the "cost" of creating intellectual property rises to its own level of incompetence, so to speak.
I think your point about the cost of patent searches is more germane to the discussion. But even on that point I question the soundness of the distinction. Why is it more difficult or costly to do a software patent search than it is to do any other kind of patent search? I've never attempted either kind, so I would appreciate some data from someone who has. Whether or not one can make a distinction between software patents and non-software patents depends upon what the results of such data would show.
Patent System (Score:1)
1st non-1st p0s7! (Score:1)
I never understood why the LPF held off at software patents.
Re:This is bad. (Score:2)
Tom's Blurb: Why We Don't Trust Rambus [tomshardware.com] (from last month on
Memory Wars [tomshardware.com]
Dissecting Rambus [tomshardware.com] and
Rambus Requiem [tomshardware.com] for good technical discussions and benchmarking.
And there are several other good ones if you look up "Rambus" or the mainboard guides on the site.
And if anyone can get a copy of the serious and excellent Forbes ASAP, apparently the May 29, 2000 issue has a good summary of Rambus's tactics.
K
Re:Patent System (Score:1)
This burns me up.... (Score:3)
For quite some time, we've been using good 'ole PC-100 SDRAM for our computers. Well, with the increasing bus speeds of computers, faster RAM is needed, which is why you can get PC-133 SDRAM for example. Now, the truly fast RAM of the future has shaped up to be a battle between DDR-SDRAM, which uses both the falling and rising edges of the clock cycle to send data, doubling it's bandwidth over convetional SDRAM. And of course, the Rambus/Intel backed RDRAM, which (to make a complex story simple) gives increased bandwidth with a sacrifice in latency.
There's one problem: RDRAM is *much* more expensive. Along the lines of $500 for a 128 MB RIMM. I've heard it joked that you could fly from New York to Los Angeles, buy 256 MB of SDRAM, fly back, and it would be cheaper than mail-ordering the same amount of RDRAM. Now, for all this money, you'd think it would be cheaper right? Nope. In almost every benchmark, RDRAM fails to outperform *conventional* SDRAM, let alone DDR.
For example, Intel's 820 and 840 motherboards, the replacement of the venerable BX chipset, are RDRAM boards. The boards are designed to use RDRAM and Intel's newest Coppermine Pentium IIIs. One problem. OEMs couldn't sell the systems! Because the price for RAM was so high, no one was buying. Or if they were, they bought systems with Via's competeing chipset. So Intel created the MTH (Memory Translator Hub) which allowed SDRAM to be used on 820 and 840 boards.
Now Intel has *heavily* invested in Rambus/RDRAM. That's why they made their new motherboards use it strictly, and only recanted when OEMs came knocking on their door with threats of only buying AMD. Now it appears that Rambus, Inc. so wants to push their overpriced, inferior technology on we the consumers, that they will resort to patent extortion to do so. Your product sucks? Just use some bullshit patent to make the superior competing product too expensive.
The market has *already* spoken. Listen up Intel and Rambus, neither OEMs, Joe User, or the techies of the world want your poor performing, overpriced silicon garbage. Rambus's attempt to force a monopoly in the RAM market needs to be stopped. I sure as hell hope other SDRAM manufacturers will not cave in as easily, or look forward to a a future where we all get to pay $500 for a stick of RAM that doesn't perform for shit.
*catches breath* Yeah, I'm really ranting now, but this anticompetetive foistering of inferior products on the market makes me sick. Time to surf over to pricewatch and buy some cheap, fast SDRAM for the new computer I am building before it is too late.
-Wintermute
It sounds like they have patents on the controller (Score:1)
I think their IP is for the interface of SDRAM not SDRAM
This is bad. (Score:1)
The licensing fees for SDRAM will probably be huge thus forcing us to buy the "cheaper" RDRAM.
This will suck for everyone except Intel and Rambus.
Memo from NSA (Score:1)
This security breach will not be tolerated.
Re:You Can Thank Intel (Score:2)
For quite a few years now the hardware industry has been working off the idea of open standards (my limited knowledge here is mostly from a few prof's at school), since the early 80's perhaps. Before this, every manufacturer controlled their own "architechture":, hardware and software from top to bottom. No compatibility between platforms.
Perhaps this started with XT clones, but companies realized everyone would do better dollar wise with open standards than without. So with closed standards, certain companies might make decent money, but with open standards, everyone would make out well, since prices would in theory drop and the computer market could grow quickly (as it did).
So now rambus and intel might be throwing us back into the dark ages. Could it be worth it to intel to get that 10% of rambus when its own revenues start to drop when the PC market tanks? Have you seen the prices on RDRAM? The ram on just about any computer would end up costing the same amount as everything else in the system!!
I guess this isn't all that suprising. The open standards idea goes somewhat counter to normal capitalist thinking. It's unfortunate. You can apply this idea to individuals as well: you can be a selfish bastard and enjoy life a bit, or you can be a nice person with a lot of friends and enjoy life a lot more. Unfortunatly it's much easier to be selfish than trusting.
Curious happenings (Score:2)
If Rambus can get memory producers to sign sdram and DDR-sdram agreements too, then they will control both sides of the memory coin and will be able to force adoption of RDRAM. This is a common fear tactic. I'm sad that Toshiba was the first to crumble. So much for the largest of the Duramai group. Hopefully the others will stand strong, because Toshiba will now be charging more for their sdram and DDR-sdram memory because Rambus will be getting royalties. Mainly because of questionable links to RDRAM that had not been proven ( the hitachi case would not have lasted this long otherwise).
Re:You Can Thank Intel (Score:1)
You're absolutely right. I was referring to the business world context. From a technical perspective, I have no respect for Intel at all. They are bullies and are stifling the real innovators.
Re: RDRAM isn't incredibly fast (Score:1)
Is this so horrible? (Score:1)
Rambus is faster, albeit more expensive, I think we all know that. The specs I've seen show 1 ns latencies, compared to the 8 ns on SDRAM. The problem, its god awful expensive.
Now I myself would love to get my hands on some RDRAM, but I simply don't have the money. Now I would definately love to see prices go down on this technology.
Intel, yep more fire for me for mentioning the non-underdog, sees RDRAM as something they want to include in their systems. Now Intel is as big as they are for a reason, and that is pushing the right technologies I would think. They were the ones if I remember right who pushed SDRAM, at a time when it was in a position much like RDRAM. Not that I trust Intel blindly, but I give them enough credit to have a good technology plan.
So what if Rambus becomes fat and happy off licencing, then maybe the users can see a cut in RDRAM prices, and an increase in PC performance. If they don't sit still and stagnate technology I don't care if its not too expensive and it runs fast. Something I think RDRAM has the capability of.
Kingston has related lawsuit with Sun... (Score:1)
Kingston, a company who builds memory boards (not the IC's, they buy them from Toshiba, Hyundai, Micron, etc.), and has never had need of a legal department, is in a lawsuit with Sun Microsystems. [kingston.com] The disagreement there is that Sun claims to have some patents regarding PC SDRAM technologies.
So basically what it is looking like, is that producers of notoriously overpriced and underperforming memory technologies (Sun and Rambus) are tired of getting kicked in the rear by cheap SDRAM and are trying to claim that since some of the patents they filed when developing these technologies involve techniques used in regular SDRAM, they deserve royalties.
They know this is going to drive up prices, and that is the real point. They are not trying to protect real IP. As for prior art, unfortunately very few people know enough about memory to understand what is truly being claimed, and even fewer have been around long enough to know the real history.
The problem with memory is that none of the circuitry is overly complicated, despite the innovations we have seen. Most of the innovation up till now, IMHO, has been on the memory controller, not the SDRAM board.
Conflict of Interest?? (Score:1)
Gee let me see, I will take a gun, hold it to nmy head, take the money out of my left pocket and put it in my right pocket...
Re:Rambus' patent (Score:1)
Re:Repo Man (Score:1)
Re:You Can Thank Intel (Score:1)
I don't know if that's true. Think of what has been achieved by standardizing industrial parts. Total interoperability. The electrical system has been standardized. The telephone system has been standardized. The fuel distribution system has been standardized. Our weights and measurements systems have been standardized. Time zones have been standardized. The internet has been standardized. There are probably many more examples which show that capitalism is not averse to standardization.
The problem seems to be more endemic to the computer industry which has only a few juggernauts who make the rules. One or two vendors control prices and and dictate obsolescence cycles. This makes it difficult for regulators to keep up with technology. I'm just speculating wildly, but I'm sure the lack of standardization in the computer industry all stems from IBM's early dominance and the failure of the market to support healthy competitors. Historians out there? Throw me a few facts, if you can.
Re:Patent System (Score:1)
Re:Why was it granted at all? (Score:1)
I've been tracking this for awhile now. Know how many patents are issued weekly? 2900 on a slow week, close to 3500+ if things get busy. My stats show that 30% of these patents are going to public companies (I only track patents going to public companies). Take a look at the crap those companies are patenting: MSFT, IBM, etc (self-plug: easily do-able on my site). Bunch-o-loons is what they are.
-k
http://www.patentinvestor.com/
Re:You Can Thank Intel (Score:2)
What's the real difference between an IBM PC AT and a CP/M machine? Not that much, it seems. Especially since the PC AT came with schematics, Intel and IBM Microelectronics would happily sell you the parts, and you even had the (C) IBM BIOS source code to burn on your personal eprom.
Of course, the hardware chaos of the CP/M days really brought out the "open standard" of IBM PC AT clones. It was a pain in the ass when everyone had incompatible floppy drives, character sets, and BIOS tweaks. So we do it the way IBM said to, and lug around 19 years of backward compatibility to this day.
--
Re:Kingston has related lawsuit with Sun... (Score:1)
Kingston made it sound like Sun was trying to extend this to include some PC SDRAM technologies. If this is not the case I was misinformed.
Re:Help me out here... (Score:1)
I would suspect that some of those patents have expired, but for other (like VGA), IBM is still making a few cents per video card sold.
The lesson of Apple is that no matter how good your tech is, the computer industry is always expanding faster than your production capacity. Libreral licencing of PC tech was a smart move, and IBM has made out much better than if the PC was closed. (Although, Microsoft, another open licencer, has made out far better than IBM has.)
--
Toshiba and the floppy drive lawsuit... (Score:5)
I recall that some analysts explained that Toshiba settled because they were, afraid of the potential of a runaway lawsuit that could have produced far greater losses (which boggles the imagination). The same lawyers (who walked away with an obscene pile in this case) have also gone after other companies (Such as Compaq) that had similar floppy drive problems, but in these cases the accused companies have decided to fight it out.
This will not help RDRAM (Score:2)
The only affect of Toshiba buckling is that it weakens the case of the rest of the "Dramurai" that are battling Rambus.
This really has nothing to do with AMD (who incidently is already a Rambus licencee). DDR will win vs Rambus based on performance and cost, and if DDR prices are raised by royalty fees it'll still be way cheaper than RDRAM, and will still be used by both AMD and Intel.
RDRAM will soon be dead, whether or not Rambus succeeds in getting fat off SDRAM/DDR royalties.
Re:Type for a paradigm shift (Score:1)
A little history on the Rambus patents (Score:5)
In the early 1990's, the SDRAM standards were being hammered out in JEDEC. Rambus was a silent participant at those early meetings. Eventually, Rambus quite attending JEDEC meetings, somewhere around 1992 or 1993, IIRC. Many of the salient aspects of the SDRAM had been settled by this time, though not hammered into their final form.
The 1990 patent was abandoned, and went without note. The 1992 continuation issued without note, as well, since it rather specifically defined an early form of the Rambus architecture.
The continuations of the 1992 patent are the things causing all of the current fury. They reference the teachings of the original 1990 patent application, and extract new claims related to the current SDR and DDR SDRAM designs.
It's interesting to note that with continuations, office actions, and the like, you can extend patent protection well beyond the intended term. Your protection begins the day you file, and extends 17 years after the date your patent is granted. Recent patent reforms have fixed this somewhat, so your protection is 20 years after filing or 17 years after issue. I don't know if this reform addresses the issue of a string of continuations being used to extend patent life.
US PAT 7,586,312 (Score:5)
A business process consisting of utilitzing the lameness of the USPTO staff to create increased revenue without doing a whole lot of work.
Prior Art
Just about every patent ever filed. But who cares.
Detailed Description
Why patents exist (Score:1)
Outside of the computer industry, the time for patents has certainly not passed. Hard goods manufacturing needs patents to protect the little guy from the big corporation -- R&D is expensive, design is expensive, production is expensive, and distribution is expensive. A small company could pour all of it's resources into a product, and then be summarily crushed by a larger one simply because it can't afford to handle these four pieces, and compete at the same time.
Now on the other hand, we have software, which essentially eliminates the cost of production. In fact, the internet essentially makes distribution nil as well. This leaves just R&D and design; because software isn't physical in nature, the line between these two tend to blur. Indeed, due to the root of all software being basic mathematics, one could argue that *all* software is prior art and/or obvious.
Which brings us to computer hardware...
This is messy. Yes, there is a "real" product being created -- but digital computer hardware is basically just collections of basic electronic elements - Each representing a different mathematical operation - placed in a particular order. The only difference between hardware and software is that the first is electromechanical while the second is electromagnetic.
(I know this is getting long...)
From this, my point: Devising a new way to build a transistor is difficult; it requires a substantial amount of effort, akin to hard goods manufacturing. If a company devises a new manufacturing process to actually create a microprocessor (smaller die sizes, new materials, etc.), this is a "significant" advance that deserves recognition and protection.
On the other hand, devising a new way to arrange these components is easy. The parts behave in a predictable fashion, and can be easily simulated. This is merely mathematics. This is not worthy of any special protection beyond a copyright.
Look at other industries -- If I create a new type of food additive I can patent that - But I cannot patent a recipe made using that additive.
Which gets us back to my real point when I started with this: Patents are not a useless concept that should be abandoned - The concepts of what things are and are not patentable need to be reexamined with respect to computer hardware.
Re:A little history on the Rambus patents (Score:2)
I don't think that is correct. The patent is still only good for 20 years - if you do a continuation of an issued patent you have to disclaim any term that will run beyond the expiration date of the original patent. Nor does it really matter in a case like this. I am sure that there will be newer memory technologies on the market well before these patents expire.
Re:A little history on the Rambus patents (Score:2)
A provisional application is just that - an application. It is not a patent, and never will become a patent. Most patent attorneys see no use for them at all.
Re:A little history on the Rambus patents (Score:2)
These things are renewable, too, I think. Me no lawyer.
Patents are NOT renewable
Re:A little history on the Rambus patents (Score:1)
I know they're not patents, but they *do* provide legal protection. They allow applicants to print "Patent Pending" on devices covered by the application. There are statutory restrictions on the use of that description, so I assume there is SOME legal advantage in doing so. So if the provisional application can be renewed one year at a time, that sounds to me like a patent whose duration can be extended, albeit not indefinitely.
Re:Is this so horrible? (Score:1)
And I would buy this why? A SDRAM-based system with the same number of slots could support 2-4GB RAM. (2 now, 4 when 1GB SDRAM is more available) The RAMBUS system would be limited currently to at most 1GB, and even that might not be possible, "Since the largest RIMM readily available on the market today is 128MB."
Rambus is having trouble making large parts, and besides, did you see the cost? $550 for 128MB? No thank you, I will buy 512MB SDRAM, or a couple registered ECC 256MB, thank you very much.
RDRAMS are also notoriously hot, hotter than a Voodoo 3.. After running for a few minutes they are dangerous to handle, and say so.. that is trouble in the case. And you have to fill every slot with something, RIMMS or CRIMMS, your choice, both expensive.
I buy a computer for performance. I have no problem buying high RPM drives with fast connections because they have a good price to performance ratio. I use an Athlon processor for the same reason. Not cheapness, value because I have spent a good chunk on my system and will continue to do so.
RDRAM is astronomically higher in price, and gives negligible if any performance improvements even when paired with a system with the same amount of SDRAM, and the same system can be upgraded to a higher memory level than RDRAM may ever achieve. certainly for the same money, you could have much more SDRAM, and therefore more performance in manycases.
Re:A little history on the Rambus patents (Score:1)
When I said "these things are renewable" I was referring to the provisional application and not the patent. According to the Patent Office's website, the provisional application can be applied for more than once. Since the provisional application gives the applicant the right to print the words "Patent Pending" on their product, it gives the invention covered by the application some protection.
That being said, I am not a lawyer. In fact, I am not even a human being. I'm just a teletype machine sitting in an abandoned warehouse.
Re:Meow (Score:1)
Re:1st non-1st p0s7! (Score:2)
Those huge expenditures are for the total cost of a complete product (e.g. Microsoft Excel) which may contain thousands of "patentable" ideas and a lot of other mundane code.
But it doesn't take a ten million dollar factory. It takes a two thousand dollar computer. C'mon, how much capital do you really think was expended to come up with the Amazon one-click patent? That patent's filing fee was higher than its development cost.
Because there's more potentially-infringing material to review. If a mechanical engineer can potentially infringe on [pulling numbers out of my ass as usual, but you'll get the idea...] 1 patent per day in the course of his work, a software engineer can potentially infringe upon 10 patents per day. Programmers invent things on-the-fly at an incredible rate compared to other professions, and when you consider that even the XOR cursor technique got a patent, then almost anything a programmer does might be patentable.
That loop I wrote today to distribute a truncation error across a bunch of items so that their sum adds up to the right thing, that routine that computes the remaining unpaid insurance balance, that cache I used so I wouldn't have to query the database a hundred times while I draw the office schedule screen ... these things were all in one day's work for me, they weren't major projects. Someone got billed a couple hundred bucks here, someone else a hundred bucks there. How many patents did I infringe upon today? I haven't the feintest clue. Maybe I could have even patented some of them, thereby screwing a thousand other programmers all over the country who did they exact same things today (and probably yesterday too).
How many full-time lawyers, doing patent searches, should be employed per programmer? I bet one lawyer per programmer isn't enough.
---
OT: EROS (Score:1)
Anyway, what would be WAY cooler than the EROS operating system would be an OS that exposes transactions at a very low level. So basically you'd have a transaction server that would communicate with the file server and other basic services as well as exposing transactions to user space. (I'm on 3 hours of sleep here, so my terminology may be inexact.) So any program can obtain a transaction id, write to multiple files and either rollback or commit all those writes as a single atomic act. This would make your RDBMS a small SQL parser that uses the transactional features of the OS. This would rock. Backups could be made much more flexible and useful.
See Jim Gray's (my second favorite microserf) "Transaction Processing" book for a coherent explanation.
Don't know why I posted this.
--Shoeboy
(former microserf)
Re:Is this so horrible? (Score:1)
The problem with RAMBUS, is that there are problems in the technology that will prevent it from being truly viable. For one thing, there is a limit of two parts per channel. If you want more channels, you have to have more memory controllers, but I have not seen an implimentation work with even two channels. It might be possible for a dual processer system to use two channels, but then you are in the realm of low end servers and high end workstations, and they need more RAM that RAMBUS can provide currently.
SDRAM immediately started with more RAM per part than SIMMS, and a dramatic increase in performance. RAMBUS offers similar performance to PC133 based systems, at a much higher price, with less expandability and smaller memory sizes. Where there have been improvements in performance, they have been marginal at best. In fact there are PC133 implementations the beat a similarly configured RAMBUS based system, IIRC.
Intel was offered a chance at pre-IPO stake in a company that had a "cool new memory technology," which they knew was sure to make some cash before it died. Intel is not a compnay known for being stupid. Of course they took the bait, and then forced the technology down the pipe so it would succeed. They announced that new chipsets would be RAMBUS chipsets. It is not working though, and people are moving to AMD. That is why Intel is backing off. (Or they'd better if they are smart.)
So maybe it is business as usual, and in that sense not as horrific to those who are now used to taking it in the rear from technocrats, but in reality it is pretty bad, because computers are going to get more expensive again, and more out of reach of the common man. Remember that that was the idea originally, with Apple, and to a lesser extent IBM. Definitely in the case of Microsoft. The personal computer is meant to be in every household in America, and eventually, the world.
Right now only a priviliged few have access. A few more than before, yes, but still not so many as should be included in this "revolution."
Re:greedy bastards (Score:2)
It may have been attractive to Toshiba to partner with the patent owners for "protection" of a nice share of the market. After all, if you go to bed with the patent owner, the market is your oyster.
End result is that our prices are higher, thier profits are higher, all while the competition is under control by the patent owners.
Re:greedy bastards (Score:1)
http://www.techweb.com/w ire/finance/story/INV19991105S0003 [techweb.com].
$$$ for RAM (Score:2)
DRAM makers pay a royalty to TI for their patents. TI's cut is actually more than Rambus charges. Yet, in volume, DRAM is much cheaper than Rambus. You'll looking at pennies more on the whole sale, and couple bucks more on the retail side of things.
Re:Is this so horrible? (Score:1)
Licencing Fees have little to do with the current cost problems with RDRAM (they have something, but not entirely the problem.) The main problem is that the fabs have to retool to produce this new type of RAM and that the number of devices per wafer is much larger than for regular RDRAM. Added to the fact the demand isn't there (chicken and egg) there is no incentive to lower costs.
Re:So where do we go now? (Score:1)
As far as this patent goes, I think it stinks. I definitely don't want to put Rambus in my computers. It is overpriced, and underpowered. The Tom's Hardware Benchmarks [tomshardware.com] said it all.
Re:A little history on the Rambus patents (Score:1)
Actually, you can have effective protection for longer than 20 years by using a provisional patent application. From the archives of the USPTO:
Provisional applications are not examined on their merits. A provisional application will become abandoned by the operation of law twelve months from its filing date. The twelve month pendency for a provisional application is not counted toward the 20 year term of a patent granted on a subsequently filed non-provisional application which relies on the filing date of the provisional application.
These things are renewable, too, I think. Me no lawyer.
Re:Hurts Intel Not (Score:1)
Re:greedy bastards (Score:1)
Yes, but you then have to pay child support for the bastard offspring, and the alimony payments can get a little steep as well.
Repo Man (Score:2)
Miller: Well the way I see it it's exactly the same. There ain't no difference between a flying saucer and a time machine. People get so hung up on specifics. They miss out on seeing the whole thing. Take South America for example. In South America thousands of people go missing every year. Nobody knows where they go. They just like disappear. But if you think about it for a minute, you realize something. There had to be a time when there was no people. Right?
Otto: Yeah. I guess.
Miller: Well where did all these people come from? hmmm? I'll tell you where. The future. Where did all these people disappear to? hmmm?
Otto: The past?
Miller: That's right and how did they get there?
Otto: How the fuck do I know?
Miller: Flying saucers. Which are really? Yeah you got it. Time machines. I think a lot about this kind of stuff. I do my best thinking on the bus. That how come I don't drive, see?
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
Long Shot (Score:2)
Re:So where do we go now? (Score:1)
1990 Data Sheet (Score:3)
(And before you ask for more detail on this, keep in mind that a lot of this is in litigation. Do your own research.)
As for double-clocked differential memory busses, I could be mistaken but I believe that IBM was using them in their mainframes before most
Re:Rambus' patent (Score:1)
Alright, since someone marked me OT, I'll explain better. From the parent:
RAMBUS has a patent on sending data on both the rising and the falling edge of the clock, which is exactly what DDR-SDRAM is using.
Transferring data on the rising and falling edge of the clock is also what Intel does with its Accelerated Graphics Port (which is more like a bus than a port) in the 2x and 4x flavors. (4x uses 2 channels, and is part of the AGP 2.0 specs.) If the parent post is correct, Rambus should also be charging Intel for the patent license.
-- LoonXTall
Re:1990 Data Sheet--utter crap (Score:1)
http://www.dramreview.com
Don't forget that the Rambus patents were filed in 1990 and the Jedec meetings in question occured in the "mid 90's".
Yes, there were some revisions to the patent applications (which were not approved until 1999, if you can believe that) that came after some of the JEDEC meetings. But the fundamental claims of the patents could NOT have come from the JEDEC meetings, because the patents in question were filed YEARS earlier.
Also, some of the 1990 patents cover characteristics of "plain old" SDRAM. Well, SDRAM didn't appear until 1993, which is the basis for Rambus claiming royalty rights on SDRAM, and which chronology also forms the basis for claims to BACK ROYALTIES for much of the memory production not only in the future but which has also occured back to 1993.
It's impossible to say with certainty what WILL happen in the courts, but don't kid yourself, the Rambus case is very, very strong.
The Rambus royalties are 1.5% to 2% for RDRAM, up to 5% for some other items (network controllers, for example).
Everyone makes it sound like the royalties are crippling. They average 1-2% and decrease with volume, depending on the royalty agreement.
Does anyone realize that for years (and perhaps still) Texas Instruments collected similar or larger royalties on virtually all memeory just because they held some patents on packaging silicon IC's in DIP packages ?
Royalties are not at all unusual in this business, almost all products carry either some cash royalties or some "cross licensing" royalties (in which no cash changes hand because two companies have signed mutual agreements in which each can use the other's patents royalty free).
I'm tired of reading articles trashing Rambus, making them sound greedy and Machevellian for doing something that all high-tech companies do every day. If you are a high-tech company, you ARE ALSO an IP company. It's just that Rambus is EXCLUSIVELY an IP company. But that doesn't give people a right to trash them for collecting a 2% royalty on technology which they developed prior to anyone else.
Is this backed up by fact? (Score:1)
Almost. Just don't assume what I "know", please.
Please provide a link, or some evidence, next time you put forward something as fact, otherwise it's going to be pretty difficult to believe. And it'll never be enough to build an argument on.
That's one of the issues that makes RDRAM look like, quite frankly, the bad choice.
Stagnate? I personally believe (note, I'm not putting forward facts, although I'd suggest reading this article [tomshardware.com]) that DDR-SDRAM will win the day over RDRAM. If RDRAM struggles over SDRAM, it doesn't stand a chance against DDR.
It would seem their technology has stagnated already.
I eagerly await proof to the contrary. Please, don't hold back.
Re:Help me out here... (Score:1)
I believe they aggressively published it on purpose. I.e. make it very likely that any programmer capable of reimplementing their BIOS had been exposed to that material. Later, they could then drag a BIOS cloner to court and ask their programmers: "Have you ever read any IBM copyrighted manuals containing our BIOS specification?".
For a brief discussion of reverse-engineering, see
cssfaq [cssfaq.org]
What Compaq/Phoenix had to do, was to find some programmers that were willing to claim under oath that they had never seen the IBM BIOS code, or copyrighted documents on the BIOS specification.
Re:Is this so horrible? (Score:1)
Re:This paradigm exists for a good reason. (Score:2)
but nobody's going to _do_ that unless for some wierd reason the conventional "paradigm" becomes unusable.. people are lazy and will always want to just build more heavy-duty versions of the old tools rather than trying to find a new tool for the same task.
Re:Is this so horrible? (Not a flame) (Score:1)
Actually, I've read a few articles that discuss Rambus architecture in detail and why Rambus doesn't live-up to its latency and speed claims.
They were way beyond my technical understanding, but the conclusion was that Rambus RAM in real world situations would be far slower than DDR-SDRAM, and even (sometimes) slower than existing PC133-SDRAM. Sounded convincing.
I'm afraid I don't have links handy, but if you're interested, check-out some of the past /. discussions of Rambus -- this is where I found the links originally.
If these articles are right, then Rambus is charging more for an inferior product, and through this patent maneuvering, are trying to kill-off the competing (and superior and cheaper) product by forcing it's price above Rambus RAM through questionable royalties. Legal or not, it isn't fair or desireable corporate beavior, and it's far from the free-market ideal of best-product-wins.
And that IS horrible.
Re:What's wrong with that? (Score:1)
From the future.
Re:greedy bastards (Score:2)
Remember the 5 billion dollar floppy drive issue?
Most experts said at the time that there was a good chance that Toshiba could have got away with a much cheaper hit on that issue but the management was afraid of the outside chance of an even steeper court settlement. They appear to be pushovers when it comes to these legal issues.
If anyone holds any patents that could possibly affect Toshiba, take notice. Send them a friendly note from your lawyer now demanding a license fee. Chances are that they will pay it without asking too many questions.
Re:Toshiba and the floppy drive lawsuit... (Score:3)
My company just made a million eight cash, plus a million two in purchase certificates off of their stupidity. We leased something like five thousand defective laptops..
The problem in the drives is so insanly unlikely to happen and then so insanly unlikely to matter due to the way filesystems work that no Toshiba laptop owner is ever going to ever notice in practical use.
On one hand, I hope they cave because I directly benefit. On the other, the premise that harm could ever be is so moronically laughable I hope they duke it out and win..
Rambus' patent (Score:3)
So where do we go now? (Score:3)
Help me out here... (Score:2)
Has this not been done because of compatibility issues? Or maybe companies have tried but have failed? Or maybe it's just not cost-effective; ie, cheaper to just pay the fees than to do the R&D to make your own.
Waiting for the day I can run my box off of a TByte RAMDISK =)
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
Re:Come on guys! (Score:2)
Preach on brother, both of you.
This paradigm exists for a good reason. (Score:4)
The problem is that this multilevel approach to memory exists for a very good reason - all serious candidates for implementing RAM have an inverse relationship between speed and cost.
Sure, you could put a gig of SRAM in your machine, but you'd have to spend a pretty penny to do it. This isn't because of some evil manufacturer jacking up prices - it's because SRAM is many times less dense than DRAM, and you're paying for the silicon area that you use.
There's also an inverse relationship between size and speed. This is why a chip's L2 SRAM is slower than its L1 SRAM. The larger RAM array has longer traces and a number of other features that increase settling time and in other ways make the response time longer.
Similarly, even if you did decide to fill your motherboard with SRAM or something comparably fast, you wouldn't be able to access it at full speed. Motherboard traces are long, which increases signal propagation latency, and noise injection from the environment is worse, which decreases the rate at which you can transfer data even if you can tolerate high latency.
These signalling problems aren't going to go away, and won't change even with different RAM types. At best, you can learn to live with them (RAMBus uses a clever scheme to reduce noise, allowing them a faster throughput while keeping the lousy latency of external memory).
As for using disk as memory or vice versa - this just isn't practical. Disk is a thousand times slower than memory and a hundred times cheaper. Take out most of your RAM and watch your machine swap to see what using this as system memory is like. Check out the price tags for solid state drives to see what the cost of using memory as a drive is like (or just ask your local store how much 30 gigs of DIMMs would cost).
In conclusion, I think that your suggestion is not compatible with existing or proposed storage technologies.
Re:1st non-1st p0s7! (Score:2)
Huh? You're claiming all IP should be public domain? (Surely I am misunderstanding you?) Wow, that is quite a premise!
I'm not in LPF, but...
IMHO, software patents are a special case, because it doesn't cost much to invent and manufacture software. This leads to lots of problems. The biggest one is that patent searching (to see if you're infringing on anyone) would become 99% of the development cost of software. People can afford to pay $100 per hour for my programming services, but not the $10000 per hour that it would cost to check to see if the hour's worth of programming that I did infringes.
There's no problem with patenting stuff that costs millions of dollars to develop in a lab. It just doesn't have the same kinds of problems as software patents.
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Re:Help me out here... (Score:3)
I believe that reverse engineering something only applies if it is not patented. That may even apply to trade secrets (can someone who IAAL correct me?)
However, patents are protected, period, assuming the patent is valid. It doesn't matter that you reversed engineered it or even if you came up with it on your own.
greedy bastards (Score:4)
In addition, since when was rambus able to get patents on an open standard? Didn't IEEE or some other organization come up with the specs? Or did rambus get patents on specific technologies while the spec only covers the description perhaps? Does anyone know? This has me more pissed off than anything else in the computer world for a long time...
Thanks yet again, US Patent Office (Score:3)
It will suck for intel too. Higher memory prices, driven by government sponsored monopoly, will both drive down demand for PCs and take capital which would have been spent on faster CPUs and peripherals. This means less computers being sold at higher prices, with slower (read: cheaper) CPUs. A net loss for Intel and everyone else in the industry, with a nice gain for Rambus (but small in terms of the total loss to the industry).
As another pointed out, the time for patents is long past - innovation no longer requires government sponsored monopolies to be worthwhile (indeed, it is arguable that patents ever encouraged innovation which wouldn't have taken place otherwise). The competative market for ever better material goods, coupled with the innate desire for people, particularly engineers, to tinker and gain noteriety for their inventins, is more than adeqaute, and probably always has been.
Re:This is bad. (Score:3)
You Can Thank Intel (Score:4)
Intel is very slyly doing all they can to ensure Rambus memory at the expense of consumer dollars and AMD's viability. I have always said that Intel was much more evil than Microsoft. They just weren't as stupid and arrogant as Microsoft.
Re:Help me out here... (Score:5)
What most people are unaware of is that while IBM appeared to be getting "slaughtered" by clone makers, IBM was reaping billions of dollars in license fees for their patented technologies. Most of this was intentionally kept very hush-hush, the license included an NDA. You could not even admit that you had spoken with IBM regarding their patents.
Yes, the ISA bus came from an Intel periodical. Yes, the CGA graphics adapter came from a Motorola periodical. Yes, the trick of using the keyboard controller as an MMU was also public knowledge, but there were *Many* aspects of the original PC, XT, and AT, that were patented IBM technology.
People get the impression that IBM somehow got screwed. They made out like bandits, and enjoyed every minute of it.
Rambus isn't the only winner (Score:2)
Actually, IBM has the earlier patent... (Score:5)
Rambus has patented two slightly different aspects of this: First, they do it with two clocks. (differential? which DDR SDRAM uses.) Second, they have a slightly different receiver arrangement. They use two complete receiver/latch circuits, where the IBM patent used a receiver/buffer and two latches.
Rambus also has a patent on adding a DLL to the mix.
Far more serious than these is their patent on the "CAS Latency Register" used in both SDR and DDR SDRAMS. This is a technique used YEARS before on other chips, but this is the first time it has been placed on a memory chip.
The history of this whole mess is badly checkered, and beyond this I really can't comment. Besides, I don't want to burn the phosphors off my tube and blister the keycaps by delivering my true feelings on this issue.
Why DDR SDRAM is better than RDRAM (Score:4)
I've been hoping that someone would bring this up so that I could rehash the discussion we had on RDRAM back when this whole latency story broke. Below you will find a number of links to other places. Suspiciously, out of the holy trinity of hardware review sites (Tom's Hardware [tomshardware.com], Anandtech [anandtech.com], and Sharky Extreme [sharkyextreme.com]), the ONLY one that speaks up in favor of RDRAM and doesn't talk about its latency problems is Anandtech. Hmm...
From Sharky Extreme [sharkyextreme.com] on this page [sharkyextreme.com]:
From Tom's Hardware [tomshardware.com]: This page [tomshardware.com] tells what the theoretical bus bandwidth is for SDRAM, DDR SDRAM, and RDRAM. I quote from the following page [tomshardware.com]:
(Emphasis is mine.) The next paragraph reads:
Finally, An article [realworldtech.com] from Real World Tech [realworldtech.com] explains just what the timings are like, why they occur, and why they mean that DDR SDRAM is going to be faster for the forseeable future. A very instructive paragraph on the general problems with RDRAM follows:
So let's see, RAMBUS memory has higher latency [realworldtech.com], less bandwidth, consumes more power and therefore dissipates more heat, and it's more expensive. It basically sucks compared to DDR SDRAM in every way... Where's the plus side?
Re:This paradigm exists for a good reason. (Score:2)
Err... did you bother to read the link he gave to magram [tekpress.com]? No? Well, apparently, magram is faster than DRAM, non-volotile, and not much more expensive that hard drive space... or something... read the article. What konstant proposed is perfectly plausable.
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Re:Is this so horrible? (Score:2)
I pray that this is a troll [yhbt.org]. If not, Rambus(t), Inc. is planting employees on /. to spread anti-SDRAM FUD.
Virtually all "real world" benchmarks contradict this AC's comment, and even Memory specific benchmarks [tomshardware.com] disagree with the parent post.
--
Re:Rambus' patent (Score:3)
Addendum (Score:2)
niggardly code? (Score:2)
When it comes to memory and resources, niggardly code isn't half bad.