Preliminary Ruling Limits Scope of Rambus Patents 124
Tackhead writes "According to this article in Electronic News, Rambus - our favorite litiga, uh, innovators in DRAM technology - has been smacked with a preliminary ruling that limits their patent claims to RAM technologies involving a multiplex bus. The article goes on to quote a source who says that since neither SDRAM nor DDR use this technique, this ruling could lead to the invalidation of RAMBUS' patent claims on SDRAM and DDR. Of course, this is just a preliminary ruling, and it's only one court battle (out of at least three), but it looks like the Good Guys (well, at the guys whose business is based on making chips instead of suing chipmakers) just might be winning."
Re:Which makes me wonder... (Score:1)
Re:competition underway... (Score:3)
Intel has made their intentions clear. They will not be using RDRAM for future chips and will likely not work with Rambus in the future. Intel's not real happy about the lawsuits and they're definately not happy about the price gouging by Rambus. It hurts Intel's business to have to rely on RDRAM. The memory is so expensive, people don't want to use the motherboards.
Rambus has about the worst PR of any tech company because of the suits and because of the prices. Personally, I doubt they'll recover. They've really put themselves into a bad spot and I don't think they can dig out, but that's just MHO.
Re:i'm stunned... (Score:1)
I like funny stuff like the next guy, but I don't come here because this is a humour site. I come here because this site offers interesting intellectual discussions about topics that are applicable to me today. Somehow, I just don't think the moderators get that, and it's only getting worse as time goes on.
The humour posts SHOULD be moderated up, but ABSOLUTELY NOT at the expensive of the other more serious posts that actually pertain to the discussion.
How much do you want to bet this post never gets moderated above a 1 or gets marked as flame bait?
Re:Chips (Score:1)
RAMBUS Stock (Score:5)
Hehe. Ouch.
Re:At last! (Score:1)
Re:IMHO (Score:2)
Why can't the patent reviewer call ??SU, with a which has a department that is well known for the technology that the patent covers. The reviewer ask to speak to a professor in that department. He ask the professor how (s)he would solve a problem covered by the patent. If the professor can describe within a ten-minute cold call the method covered by the patent, then it is trivial.
I think this would kill most of the high tech patents being given out today, because the patents only describe the obvious way to do something with a computer. (ie, it's patentable just because it is done by a computer seems to be acceptable by the USPTO)
Re:competition underway... (Score:1)
Furtermore, a RAM upgrade does not mean that you are forced to use RDRAM. It just means a RAM upgrade vs. a processor upgrade. Your confusing your statement.
PS. aren't per processor license scheme's frighteningly evil? <shudder>
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
MOD THIS FOOL UP (Score:2)
Re:Too bad the whole thing is bogus... (Score:2)
The clear inference is that the order has been leaked, and the leak is reasonably accurate.
Re:IMHO (Score:1)
-B
innovation? (Score:2)
"Microsoft strives to produce innovative products..." -- Microsoft.com
For people learning english, they might think the word "innovation" means "to stick a honkin' corporate phallus up the customer's ass".
Update (Score:1)
It seems Bloombergs servers make it difficult to link directly to the article [bloomberg.com], and this info is pseudo redundant since I got it from an AC below, who isn't being modded up.
You aren't making any sense... (Score:2)
"One might be tricked into believing a preliminary ruling limited the scope of Rambus patents, when in reality, it only means that a preliminary ruling limited the scope of Rambus patents."
You are saying the same thing twice and saying they are different. In the first part of that sentence, you say:
a preliminary ruling limited the scope of Rambus patents
And then you say, in the same sentence:
a preliminary ruling limited the scope of Rambus patents
So, if we make
X = "a preliminary ruling limited the scope of Rambus patents"
and
Y = "a preliminary ruling limited the scope of Rambus patents"
Then obviously X = Y, but you are saying X != Y ???
'Psuedo program to illustate my point
If (X == Y) {
C = X
}
So, we could say "One might be tricked into believing [%= C %], when in reality, it only means that [%= C %].
WTF??
Competition underway--and how! (Score:2)
I can now get 128 MB DDR-SDRAM DIMM's for under US$80! =:-0 And it appears that the RDRAM makers have a clue, too: 128 MB PC-800 RIMM's now sell for under US$150. (Thud)
Maybe the competition from DDR-SDRAM has finally forced the price of RIMM's down for a change.
Re:oh my god! (Score:1)
Re:Rambus get beat up by investors (Score:1)
--
not quite flamebait, but youre right nonetheless (Score:1)
How much do you want to bet this post never gets moderated above a 1 or gets marked as flame bait?
Yet another example of the stupidity of most moderators. Offtopic, yet. Flamebait, possibly. This post is most certainly NOT a troll.
I hope this one comes up in metamod
Re:oh my god! (Score:1)
Another view on this.... (Score:1)
Re:Malda's RMBS fixation. (Score:1)
As to pricing and bundling, why would we WANT DDR2100 bundled with an Athlon? Most people who are willing to pop enough for a brand new Athlon or P4 and RAM don't WANT to get it bundled. They want the most flexibility in choosing all of their parts to make sure they get the best possible. Honestly you sound like a Microsoft marketing guy - remember getting it bundled is always better! Now that may be a matter of opinion but I happen to be a highly opinionated individual and I personally think bundling can bite my big white monkey. But I digress. I'm responding to your facts, not railing M$. I'll have to do that another day.
Yes, this is real performance on real motherboards and yes someone finally did design a decent controller with enough power. The latency problem is still there though. AFAIK they are doing interleave to somewhat sidestep the problem, which actually isn't too bad of a solution. However remember it took them QUITE a long time to make that decent controller and the incomplete versions were released to the market with large flaws. Intel isn't the only company to ever have done that but my point is that they DID do it, and deserve to be berated for it just as much or little as any other company. We personally have about 500 brand new cp's at the company I work for, all with RDRAM. The controllers on these boards were so bad that we eventually ended up having to replace all the boards to get then to run correctly. Once they were running, they've run fairly reliably (aside from other hardware problems not associated with Intel or Rambus). But be that as it may I still don't really like them. My system at home is only slightly clock speed faster than these but it would whoop the pc's at work any day, even with simple old PC-133 SDRAM. I'm not saying this as official benchmark stuff, simply that I'm not satisfied with RDRAM so far.
And as to the subject of cooling, yes people strab mammoth heat sinks to their processors. It's become somewhat of a sport for the daring/rich. However cooling RAM is an entirely different issue. For one thing, RDRAM runs so hot just clocked normally that it has to go into different sleep states to avoid basiclaly melting itself. This is a big part of what's behind the large latency associated with RDRAM. And since they're running so hot already, this seriously inhibits your ability to overclock your bus (the only way to overclock a P4 anyway). Cooling your RAM is very difficult even if you did want to do it because most of it is mounted perpendicular to the board, as opposed to the CPU that is now mounted parallel. And when the cpu's WERE mounted perpendicular, there had to be a large amount of clear space around it to fit the heat sink/fan, space that really couldn't be used for much else. You could blow a fan on the mem, but this defintely isn't the most efficient way. So they left in the sleep modes and the overclocking is limited...in other words the heat problem really does remain, just not really in a form you and I deal with.
I hope this was an acceptable response to your facts as you posted them. I sincerely enjoyed the intellectual discussion.
Re:DDR (Score:1)
If you really want to see some fireworks... (Score:1)
Now Fool keeps the boards civil, at least as far as language goes, but not Raging Bull.
If you're the type who likes to throw gasoline onto a fire, here's a bonfire just waiting for you to back up the fuel tanker.
Re:IMHO (Score:1)
I think it's about time we banned patenting of things which are necessary by definition in inventions. Like flammable liquids in combustion engines. To be patentable it should be necessary by innovation not by definition of the task it performs.
Re:i'm stunned... (Score:1)
Re:competition underway... (Score:4)
Yup. RDRAM is pretty clearly a Rambus innovation, and I don't begrudge them their royalties on RDRAM sales.
There's nothing intrinsically evil about saying "we invent things and license the tech to people who want to build them". It's only when Rambus said "Oh yeah, all your RAM are belong to us!" that I think they crossed the line from being innovators into being litigators.
If you invent something, you can license it. My beef with Rambus is that I don't believe they had anything to do with the "invention" of SDRAM or DDR, and that they therefore have no legitimate claim to royalties on those products.
If Rambus makes a fortune because Intel ships a CPU/chipset combo that turns the performance potential of RDRAM into real-world advantages, and their technology gains marketshare from DDR, more power to 'em.
But if the world goes with DDR instead of RDRAM, then Rambus (IMHO) should either come up with something better than DDR and patent it, or stick a fork in itself, 'cuz it's done.
Maybe I am out of line for thinking this... (Score:3)
In this case, I am wondering what RAMBUS is thinking.. Why are they doing this? Are they truly just a bunch of jerks? Why do they feel that they have rights to some of this technology? I mean, certainly someone there thinks they have a case. The more I read /., the more I think that all these companies are evil demons trying to take away my liberties and other people's hard work. Is this truly an accurate assessment? Surely someone can speak for RAMBUS to explain why they think that they are in the right on this matter.
Re:Phrasing of headline is misleading. (Score:2)
The DDR patent still may hold water, as IIRC it was specific concerning the placement of a register in the memory. I think the JEDEC/RICO prospects are interesting, considering conflicting information coming out.
--
Re:So what did you think it meant? (Score:2)
Problem is that it didn't limit the SCOPE of any patent. It merely said that, most likely (remember its a preliminary ruling), RAMBUS's patent doesn't even apply in the case of SDRAM. No "limiting of scope" and no invalidation of any part of the patent, just a Judge being safe and agreeing with an "expert" that RAMBUS has no patent on SDRAM.
Actually ... (Score:4)
DDR II, on the other hand, has had it designed out. Dang.
Re:About time! (Score:2)
--
Re:competition underway... (Score:1)
Do consumers want or need a P4 with RDRAM? Will AMD continue to take market share, thereby boosting DDR sales? Will RDRAM prices come down? Will DDR chipsets finally ship in volume? And which technology really works better?
Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion!!
Re:Maybe I am out of line for thinking this... (Score:1)
Of course, there are people who will disagree and say that Rambus didn't actually violate the rules of the organization (rules are subjective, after all). But the only people who can really speak to Rambus' state of mind are the people who are accused of these actions, and they're not going to talk. I'd venture to say that beyond the litigants, only the courts really know the whole story. If they do end up issuing a final ruling against Rambus, it'll mean that there was a pretty clear cut case.
Re:Phrasing of headline is misleading. (Score:3)
Having 10 patents myself, I know a little about this business.
"There goes their patent" is actually a better phrasing of it. You can patent anything unique you invent - the trick is to patent something valuable - e.g. something the market actually wants.
RAMBUS went on this strategy of suing SDRAM makers because their own technology turned out to be inferior [tomshardware.com], offering massively higher price with no matching performance gain.
If RAMBUS is unable to enforce their patent against SDRAM, then the patent is - from a business standpoint - worthless. All it could be used for is preventing unauthorized copies of RAMBUS memory, which most customers don't want anyway.
Re:Maybe I am out of line for thinking this... (Score:3)
As you point out - it's /. The side with the most IP lawyers is automatically not the "good guys" :-)
> Why are they doing this? Are they truly just a bunch of jerks? Why do they feel that they have rights to some of this technology?
1) To make money because they ain't gettin' enough from RDRAM sales to keep their investors happy.
2) Yes they are, but that's not important ;-)
3) IMHO, they're grasping at straws (e.g. programmable latency) to support their case because they see RDRAM going away in favor of DDR. If they can get their hands on royalties from DDR and SDRAM, they make big bucks for their shareholders.
I see "making big bucks for their shareholders" as a legitimate business activity of any company. It just so happens that the way in which this company is going about it (i.e. trying to extend a patent intended to cover RDRAM into SDRAM and DDR after you've realized that your RDRAM tech isn't gonna take over the world the way you thought it was) happens to make them look like a bunch of jerks.
RMBS (Score:1)
Price: 25.21 (-28.68%) 1:34pm ET
Range: 25.0 - 35.73
Vol : 14,973,400
P/E : 86.931
Me thinks rambus is due to die... a P/E that high is laughable in light of possible loss of main source of revenue. =)
Re:Fortuitous Promulgator (Score:1)
This story has been denied as patently false by all players involved. Please see this post [slashdot.org] and the Bloomberg article here [bloomberg.com]. I am posting this specifically because the above post is languishing at 0 while 10,000 idiots are either celebrating or frothing and foaming about a news story which isn't even true.
Thanks, cunts!
Love,
Slashfucker
Here's what's happening. (Score:1)
Not really (Score:1)
___
Re:Malda's RMBS fixation. (Score:1)
It's not even very expensive any more - compare the price of Rambus and DDR2100 memory. Do you get DDR2100 memory bundled with a rev.C Athlon? No - but you do get Rambus with a Pentium 4. Yet do we even see much response to these facts when I post them? No, just lots of red-faced
This is real world performance, on real motherboards, running real tests. I guess somehow someone did design a decent controller, and provided enough power, and overcame the latency problem. Extreme coolers? Just take a look at what people are strapping to their CPUs these days. Herr Pabst even awards first place to the biggest of the lot, the Swiftech MC462 in the latest test. That's no obstacle in a modern machine.
It looks like your sig is true, at least as far as you are concerned.
Re:Too bad the whole thing is bogus... (Score:1)
FAKE NEWS!?!? Check this link, was it Spin? (Score:3)
--
Intel decided to keep unlucky rabbits foot (Score:2)
Motley Fool Discussion board link (Score:2)
A valid point? [fool.com]
--
Rambus earnings depend on royalties (Score:2)
Re:Phrasing of headline is misleading. (Score:1)
Maybe its because the people who actually know about the various memory technologies are tired on explaning over and over the exact same thing to people who probably have no clue what they are talking about, but read somewhere that "insert product here" sucks and therefore is bad.
DRDRAM has significant advantages over SDR SDRAM, DDR SDRAM, DDR-II SDRAM and are roughly the same power. Anyone saying otherwise either hasn't looked at the issues or doesn't know what they are talking about(This included a lot of the hardware review sites, but what do you expect when you get your technical information from a Jr High school student.)
Re:competition underway... (Score:2)
RDRAM - PC600, 16 bit
SDRAM - PC133, 64 bit
600 x 16 = 9600
133 x 64 = 8152
Now imagine DDR SDRAM, which is almost twice as fast since it reads and writes at the same time. RDRAM is just not worth it.
DRDRAM does not have power problems (Score:1)
Think before you spew.
Re:Fortuitous Promulgator (Score:1)
Re:RAMBUS Stock (Score:1)
interesting to note that there is NO actually ruling, all this selling is fired up by speculation.
one more note: options for RMBS shares surge today.
Re:Malda's RMBS fixation. (Score:1)
And you know all this because:
A: you read it on some hardware site?
B: you read it on usenet?
C: you are the urban legend spambot?
First of all the power of DRDRAM is roughly the same as DDR DRAM, in fact, depending of the configurations DRDRAM can generate less heat. Go read data sheet and stop reading usenet and hardware review sites. It is true that an individual chip on a rambus channel can get hot, but the other chips will be generating almost no heat. The heat spreader is there to spread heat and keep all the chips at a roughly even temperature.
As far as latency is concerned, the benchmarks on latency with PC chipsets show that depending on the chipset DRDRAM is better or worth than CL2 SDR SDRAM. So again there is no real fact behind the supposed higher latencies of DRDRAM. The overall differences in latencies are once again well overblown, with the highest variable in latency of a system being the chipset.
Chips (Score:1)
Worked for MS
Re:Maybe I am out of line for thinking this... (Score:2)
I liked the fraud charges... (Score:2)
Re:i'm stunned... (Score:2)
Moderation is destined to be a little inaccurate when there's a delay involved like that.
And that's despite all the moderators who read at 2+, Highest First. All they ever see is the high-rated posts.
IMHO having moderator points should put you into 0+, nested.
I wouldn't force 'oldest first', but if anyone moded something 'redundant' while reading in 'newest first' I'd slap them with a tuna.
Phrasing of headline is misleading. (Score:3)
Re:competition underway... (Score:2)
The prices don't work for RDRAM for *most* things. If you're looking for a fast single CPU to do little except stream data, RDRAM is faster. But if you're worried about latency which is the real issue in any non-contrived server example, then RDRAM doesn't cut it anyways. The extra cost just makes it worse.
If RAMBUS actually offered performance benefits in those areas, it might justify the price.
But, if you really care about performance, you don't use x86 and you don't run NT. Sun, SGI, Compaq (Alpha), and IBM are in business for a reason...
i'm stunned... (Score:4)
Re:Phrasing of headline is misleading. (Score:1)
competition underway... (Score:3)
Do consumers want or need a P4 with RDRAM? Will AMD continue to take market share, thereby boosting DDR sales? Will RDRAM prices come down? Will DDR chipsets finally ship in volume? And which technology really works better?
This battle is far from settled even when excluding the court case. Intel IS going to ship DDR product with the P4, but at a later date, conceiveably after RDRAM is reaching mass acceptance. They are keeping the door open, though. RAMBUS isn't going away soon, if ever.
At last! (Score:1)
Re:competition underway... (Score:1)
(end comment) */ }
Re:Maybe I am out of line for thinking this... (Score:1)
they're stupid
YES
they're stupid
YES
HA! (Score:2)
Re:About time! (Score:3)
Probably not. Micron, for instance, never paid Rambus a cent - that's why they're part of another lawsuit ;-)
If you signed a contract with Rambus that said "we'll pay you a royalty on our SDRAM sales between $NOW and $LATER", well, uh, you signed the contract. Tough.
Of course, if you signed such a contract, and Rambus' patents turn out to be invalid, odds are you're gonna drive a harder bargain when the contract expires.
(I suppose that if a judge rules that Rambus knew its patents were invalid at the time it wrote the contract, it may invalidate the contract altogether - but that would require proof of fraudulent intent, which is a much harder thing to prove than anything that's been seen up to this point. Personally, I think there'd be reasonable doubt - Rambus' goons wouldn't have gone on the path of attempting to license DDR and SDRAM unless they had reason to believe they could get away with it. Even if the patents are invalidated, given what's been made public so far, I think Rambus can still credibly claim that they thought their DDR/SDRAM land grab would stand up in court.)
Re:competition underway... (Score:3)
Not really. Servers account for about half of all DRAM shipped, and the server mfgs are unanimous in rejecting Rambus. Likewise video, notebook, and most embedded applications. About the only space that Rambus can come close to competing in is high-end desktop machines.
As a result, DDR is guaranteed to dominate the volume shipments, which runs the economy-of-scale benefit their way. Bottom line: Rambus has to have a killer advantage of some sort to even stay in the game.
Right now the only major advantage that Rambus has is that Intel cleverly designed the Pentium IV pipeline around Rambus. Yes, that's right, the P4 is a Rambus-specific processor. Smooth move, Intel.
News : No News (Score:1)
This was FUD
Here's the link:
http://quote.bloomberg.com/fgcgi.cgi?T=marketsq
Quote:
Rambus Shares Fall After Web Site's Report on Patent Trial
By John Stebbins
Los Altos, California, March 15 (Bloomberg) -- Rambus Inc. shares fell as much as 28 percent after a computer-news Web site, citing unnamed industry sources, reported that a U.S. judge had limited the memory-chip maker's patent-infringement lawsuit against Germany's Infineon Technologies AG.
Rambus Chief Financial Officer Gary Harmon said no official ruling had been made, although one might come out later today. Infineon attorney Robert Tyler, of the Richmond law firm McGuireWoods LLP, agreed.
ElectronicNews Online, published by Reed Elsevier Inc.'s Cahners Business Information division, said U.S. District Judge Robert Joyce issued his ruling yesterday in Richmond, Virginia.
``The fact is, no order was issued yesterday,'' Tyler said. ``We have been hearing that something would be coming out soon, probably today. I don't know what sources Cahners is citing.''
Rambus shares plunged $8.47 to $26.88 in midday trading after dropping as low as $25.60.
Re:Phrasing of headline is misleading. (Score:2)
Yeah, the headline (which I wrote) is a bit misleading. I'd hoped I'd cleared it up in the "article text" by mentioning that (a) it's a preliminary ruling, and (b) the judge hasn't concluded that DDR and SDRAM don't use a multiplex bus -- only a source in the article.
So two things have to happen: (1) The judge has to agree that neither DDR nor SDRAM use a multiplex bus, and (2) The judge has to remain convinced that Rambus' patent does not extend beyond the multiplex bus.
Although this ruling is a blow for Rambus, it's not the end. If the Rambus landsharks can sway the judge on either of these two points, they can still win.
Hitachi signs agreement? (Score:1)
Khyron
The Best Part... (Score:3)
If individuals are convicted of fraud, it could mean more than a financial slap on the wrist, sources said.
"This means that people could go to jail. That's what this means," the source said.
And they should be thrown in jail. RAMBUS obviously committed fraud by going into the JEDEC standards meeting knowing that that the standard reached would infringe on their patents, not notifying JEDEC that they were patent pending on technoligies that were in the standard and then modifying their patent applications to cover even more of the agreed upon standard. Hell, RAMBUS management deserves more than jailtime; they deserve to be drawn and quarterd. Maybe this (throwing RAMBUS employees and lawyers) into jail would discourage others from attempting to follow RAMBUS's litigeous lead.
Re:i'm stunned... (Score:1)
Re:Malda's RMBS fixation. (Score:3)
Re:Maybe I am out of line for thinking this... (Score:1)
Re:i'm stunned... (Score:1)
Please, no more reverse-psychology endings. They've been overdone.
oh my god! (Score:1)
Re:competition underway... (Score:1)
Sadly, sometimes price per performance does justify that kind of expense. An example is for servers running software with very high per-processor license fees. If I'm paying a $25,000 per processor license fee, it makes sense to spend $1000 on faster RAM to get a 10% increase in per-processor performance. Of course it might make more sense to plow that money into a different processor (or software without insane licensing fees) but the point is still there.
Re:Speaking of doomed companies... (Score:1)
Manipulation ? (Score:1)
Well, your link is not reachable right now leading me to wonder if it's not you that is trying to manipulate us, and with us the stock market...
You can call me paranoid...
Re:RAMBUS Stock (Score:1)
Re:i'm stunned... (Score:2)
--
Don Dugger
VA Linux Systems
Re:IMHO (Score:2)
All JEDEC members were supposed to tell of any patents involving the area under discussion ahead of time which might interfere with any standards set by the group... This was not done by Rambus in that their pending patents which we are discussing now were not disclosed (even though they were only 'pending' they still should have listed them).
On the other hand I'm betting the management/legal people within Rambus didn't even know some of their ideas had been used for some time & it's pretty shaddy that they only bother to mention this as their fledgling product RDRAM is suffering a bad introduction to the market... That is the truly shady part of the deal in my thinking...
Re:competition underway... (Score:2)
Wait a minute. Where did this come from? Last I heard, Intel still loved RDRAM.
Re:i'm stunned... (Score:2)
----
Re:Fortuitous Promulgator (Score:2)
I can't vouch for whether or not they changed the byline while you were typing it, but the byline at "http://www.electronicnews.com/enews/news/NewsInde x.asp" for March 14 now says "Expected Rambus Ruling Could Limit Scope Of Patents"...
It sure as hell didn't say that this morning, when I read the article and submitted the link to Slashdot.
Yeah, you are... (Score:2)
Forces of Evil
Forces of Good
These aren't complete lists but they're enough to help yout get by. Whenever you see a story, post "Yay! (Force of good) rocks! (Force of Evil) sucks!" and you'll do fine.
Re:Fortuitous Promulgator (Score:2)
Apologies to /. for posting twice in response to the same post. But if you visited the site early in the day, check your browser's cache. If you have a copy for the original article (this morning's version with the stronger by-line), you may wish to save it somewhere on your hard drive.
IMNSHO, Electronic News should do the right thing and print a retraction of the original article.
Re:Here's what's happening. (Score:2)
Re:Phrasing of headline is misleading. (Score:2)
But that's not because it's 16b. That's because it's high latency.
Many good (ie, not Rambus) ideas involve 16b or 8b memory, a thin interface that runs very quickly should theoretically cut down latency, and provide the same throughput. (16b ram would have to run at 533Mhz to provide the bandwidth of PC133 SDRAM)
That's not as bad as it sounds. A simpler bus is often easy to get running at higher speeds. Synchronizing 64 signals is hard. Synchronizing 8 or 16 is fairly easy.
And then, if it takes that few traces on the motherboard, you can throw another seperate channel, or more. That would immediately double your bandwidth.
So the thin bus isn't a bad idea, RAM might go there eventually, but we won't be using Rambus.
Re:competition underway... (Score:2)
As for the Pentium IV, Intel has now garnered a definite track record for doing it wrong the first time. It started up with the crippled 486SX and it's complete CPU replacement masquerading as a 387-like FPU, the 487SX. Next up was the 5V room heater disguised as a Pentium. Then we got to the Pentium Pro, which was great for a real OS like OS/2 or Linux, but absolutely stunk on the dominant Win3 or Win95 platforms.
Even aside from being 'Designed for DRDRAM', the Pentium IV is a rather peaky beast. On some things it absolutely flies, but on others it's slower than an older CPU half its speed. It doesn't appear well balanced.
Look for Pentium IV.1 in another year or less. It will be better balanced, may have the SMT there's so much buzz about, and we'll see whether it's still 'Designed for DRDRAM'.
IMHO (Score:5)
1. Go to standards commities, listen to all the sugestions, and patent them in the hope that one day the suggestions are use. (which is what RAMBUS is alleged to have done by some)
2. Go to a standards commities and suggest your recently filed patent as a standard, in the hope someone will listen and add it to the standard. (which is what MS did with CSS)
In order for standards to be accepted or even used for that matter, there NEEDS to be full disclosure and trust at the comitties. Meaning: No Patents Allowed. Really, the EU, The US, and other interested parties should sign a treaty that agrees on a uniform language to prevent patents from going into or out of a conference. That and the definition of "non-trival" when applied to a patent should mean more than "something a high school grad wouldn't understand". Sure, I don't understand RAM design, but there are those who KNOW what non-trivial is and it seems RAMBUS has patented a non-trivial technology.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:IMHO (Score:2)
Brain fart alert! I meant to type
RAMBUS has patented a trivial technology
Which makes me wonder... (Score:2)
Heh, heh -- I hope those royalty agreements are binding, so the wimps have to pay for their wimpiness even if the Rambus patent is invalidated. It'll teach'em not to be so wussy...
Damm -- I wonder how much Rambus has collected already from their patent skullduggery?
--
Scott Robert Ladd
Master of Complexity
Destroyer of Order and Chaos
Criminal-Fraud Claims, rumor, innuendo, etc. (Score:5)
And of course, The Register's take on the SDRAM/DDR SDRAM [theregister.co.uk].
Assuming this whole thing blows up in Rambus' face, this would end the SDRAM subsidy of RDRAM, which you can expect to see suffer an awful fate. Makes you wonder what Intel is thinking at this moment, with it's finger stuck in the door jamb.
--
Re:So what did you think it meant? (Score:2)
FWIW, I leeched the headline pretty much verbatim from the Electronic News article. (IANAL, and the Electronic News article may have overstated the case, and I may have propagated the overstatement)
Your phrasing - "most likely" their DDR/SDRAM claims will not apply - is probably the more fair take on the story.
Too bad the whole thing is bogus... (Score:3)
Re:competition underway... (Score:2)
I have 512MB of PC133. It cost me $216 Cdn.
512MB of RDRAM costs ~$1300 Cdn. Maybe more, maybe less. The point is, it's way, way more expensive.
The price/performance ratio does not justify the cost. Now, if rdram was sold at loss-leader prices in order to gain marketshare, then maybe I would've considered using it, but that's not in the best itnerests of the RAM makers, so it won't happen.
Therefore, RDRAM is dead. It's window of opportunity is closed. Hence their last gasp stream of litigations. IMHO, which will likely end in criminal investigations against Rambus over their lack of full disclosure when participating in the JEDEC conference... or something to that effect.
Whatever... so long as they go down in a flaming heap.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Re:Hitachi signs agreement? (Score:3)
Hyundai is presently in rather dire financial straits due to a high debt load. Hyundai may just have been hedging their bets, as they may not be in a position to afford the cost of losing the case against Rambus.
It's also possible that since RDRAM is more expensive than SDRAM or DDR, and we all know how low RAM prices have gotten lately, Hyundai may have decided there's no money to be made in anything other than RDRAM. (And that there's therefore no money to be saved by trying to cut Rambus out of their SDRAM and DDR sales, since they may not be making money on these types of RAM anyways)
RAM acronyms (Score:2)
What does the former East Germany have to do with RAM?
Nothing to my knowledge, but I can see how you'd think that (Deutsch Democratic(sic) Republic). This is what all that alphabet soup really means:
I hope this clarifies what "DDR" means. Of course, I could be talking out of my proverbial ass.
All your hallucinogen [pineight.com] are belong to us.
Re:Phrasing of headline is misleading. (Score:2)
Rambus were a little irritated that their technology wasn't being used (cos it sucked but that's not the point), so they decided hmm, let's try and hit everyone who makes memory. So hopefully this case will show that SDRAM and DDR RAM manufacturers don't need to pay royalties to Rambus (which is almost exclusively their form of income these days unless people decide to go and buy the P4...)
--
Andrew