Rambus Files Antitrust Suit Against Memory Makers

bender647 writes "Forbes reports: 'Chip designer Rambus sued several major computer memory makers Wednesday, claiming they illegally conspired to limit production and raise prices in an effort to block widespread adoption of Rambus' technology.' Rambus believes that RDRAM was not the success it should have been because chip makers did not want to pay their royalties."

insane

[apocalypse76]

Ok, so thier trying to have other companies pay for thier own stupidity?

Re:insane

[ePhil_One]

Ok, so thier trying to have other companies pay for thier own stupidity?

Anybody not see this coming from a company that patents ideas coming from a industry meeting, slipped their proprietary IP into open standards, sued the manufacturers of their products, and generally behaved as a two year old in the ethics department?

Man, who would chose to work for this company?

Re:insane

[Tackhead]

> Anybody not see this coming from a company that patents ideas coming from a industry meeting, slipped their proprietary IP into open standards, sued the manufacturers of their products, and generally behaved as a two year old in the ethics department?
>
> Man, who would chose to work for this company?

I hear Darl McBride'll be looking for work pretty soon.

Apparently, someone told him he could still sue people who refused to pay the additional $69.90 for the stick of RDRAM that RAMBUS forgot to bundle with every $699.00 SCO OpenSewer License.

Now we know

[DaveAtFraud]

Who inherits the title of litiguous bastards [thescogroup.com] once IBM, Novell, Red Hat, Autozone, Daimler-Chryslers, et al finish flushing the current holder of the title down the crapper.

Re:Now we know

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientology [xenu.net]

Re:Could someone explain...

[kikta]

I don't know the whole history of this Rambus thing. Could someone explain what they did so wrong? I keep hearing about "what they did at that technology conference."

No problem. [slashdot.org]

Not even a *good* troll...

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Rambus originally sued because technology they presented to JEDEC that became key for DDR memory was secretly patented by them. After DDR gained marketshare, they turned around & surprised everyone with a lawsuit over that technology. I don't see what your story has to do with that issue.

2) You have any references for any of this?

3) You just registered as RDRAMman & posted this one comment. If you're going to troll, don't be so obvious.

4) You suck.

False Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

The truth is Farmwald and Horwitz had already applied for patents at the time of the initial JEDEC meeting you discuss.

That's okay.

What comes next isn't. The two of them proposed what became the RAMBUS standard as a proposal to the working group. Still okay, but.... what these two sleezoids did next was to "neglect" to tell everybody that RAMBUS was proprietary would require royalty payments to what became RAMBUS.

So everybody accepted the standard because RAMBUS was a decent idea. After adoption...POOF! "HEY GUYS! WE HAVE A PATENT ON THIS STUFF, AND YOU'RE GONNA PAY OUT THE ASS!"

Funny how that worked.

A judge heard the story and threw RAMBUS out of court on their RAMASS.

And lets look at the trouble with RAMBUS 1) Expensive because (2) Yields were so low (3) because the technology is inherently low-yield (4) Oh, and while it delivers high bandwidth it has (5) Horrible latency.

Please just go away. The RAMBUS company wasn't a company like you might imagine. It was simply a con game that tricked everybody.

DDR 3200 today kicks RAMBUS's ass in performance and price.

And oh, we don't have to pay a ridiculous amount to use it.

Ask Intel. They basically screwed up by supporting RAMBUS. The public didn't want it.

So go away. RAMBUS never had any advantages, and had oh-so-many disadvantages.

Re:Could someone explain...

[Mister Transistor]

I think the biggest complaint was they they developed an incompatible standard, tried to force the industry to use their standard, and then tried to force all the chip and motherboard makers to pay them royalties to use it.

This does smack of McBride and SCO, though. Develop/acquire an (arguably) inferior product, then try to extort everyone who uses it, and sue everyone else who doesn't.

Re:Could someone explain...

[PCBman!]

They were in on the talks with the rest of the memory standards organization JEDEC. JEDEC's rules say that members must disclose all IP and licensing terms.

Rambus not only didn't do that, they pimped their own knowledge of ram and techniques to speed up ram AND applied for/lengthened patents crucial to SDRAM and DDR SDRAM. When it started to become obvious that RDRAM was simply not going to make it in the market (Intel's RDRAM chipsets could NOT compete against it's own SDRAM chipsets--i820/i840 vs 440BX), Rambus decided sue anybody and everybody who produced SDRAM and DDR SDRAM but didn't buy licenses.

Intel really didn't have anything that showed off RDRAM's abilities until they went dual channel with the P4's i850. At that time, RDRAM still cost too much and DDR SDRAM went dual channel soon after.

Don't think the high cost of RDRAM was all to blame on the manufacturers and Rambus' license either. A lot of that was in the fabrication and packaging issues. At the time Rambus came out, SDRAM ran at 100/133 MHz while Rambus was at 800 MHz--really 400 Mhz DDR. So there were OBVIOUS electrical characteristics issues that had to be taken care of at the fab and package levels to bring yields up at a time when memory manufacturers were LOSING money per part. Had RDRAM come out sooner, or come out faster at a later date, things probably would have turned out differently.

Re:Could someone explain...

[Control Group]

Short version: they inserted their intellectual property into portions of the developing standard without telling anyone involved that they owned the patents. Then they turned around and sued all the major RAM manufacurers for patent violation.

This, then, is a fairly unsurprising tactic from them. Make no mistake about it, RAMBUS has never been a RAM company. It's an intellectual property company which attempts to make money via licensing and litigation.

Stab

[Glonoinha]

"We have a fiduciary obligation to our shareholders to do something about this"

Ok from now on whoever says this, gets stabbed in the throat. That phrase is hereby forbidden, under penalty of Throatgestabben.

Re:Stab

[Brandybuck]

Why? Because it's an unpleasant truth?

No, because it's a lie! They have a responsibility to the shareholders to properly manage the company. That is a significantly different goal.

Re:Stab

[Izago909]

If they were really concerned about their stockholders they would not have been shady about the FTC-Patent mess in the first place. They were trying to rig the game from the get go and now scream bloody murder when it blows up in their face. Whatever harm comes to the stockholders was caused by the senior staff and legal department at Rambus and by no one else. Half the reason they failed was because the market said the performance is acceptable, but the price is unreasonable. The only way this story could

Re:Stab

[SpaceLifeForm]

Contract? WTF are you referring to?

Investing in a corp is not a contract that guarantees some ROI, it's a bet on a horse. Your comment is indicative of the problems that beset the investment community today. Buying stock does not guarantee you a damn thing, except that you can get some pretty pieces of fancy paper.

Re:insane

[antarctican]

But this one under the "duh" category.

Rambus believes that RDRAM was not the success it should have been because chip makers did not want to pay their royalties.

Duh. Two technologies, one free, the other having outrageous royalties... which would you pick? This proves that one does not have to be a genius to run a company.... And that royalties on technology is bad, m'kay?

Re:insane

[zoombat]

Two technologies, one free, the other having outrageous royalties...

That's what I've always heard too, but exactly HOW high are the royalties? Best I could find was this PDF [corporate-ir.net], which says in the middle of page 4, "Royaly rates range up to a maximum of approximately 2.5% for RDRAMs and a maximum of approximately 5% for logic ICs."

Prices for RDRAM were *way* more than 5% more than DDR... anyone else have something to site regarding royalty rates??

Re:insane

[Planesdragon]

Duh. Two technologies, one free, the other having outrageous royalties... which would you pick?

I, like everyone else with enough sense to use AMD instead of Intel, would add up the cost of using each of them--including the royalty cost and the value of any performance increase the new tech has over the open one--and pick the one that does what I need done.

And that royalties on technology is bad, m'kay?

are, bad. ARE bad. Or, rather, are NOT bad, just a thing that happens. (They're actually a basic idea behind the whole patent process--we essentially pay people to tell us what they've invented, and in exchange we give them a right to charge royalties on anyone who wants to use that invention for a relatively short while. Based on the USA's performance since we intorudced the patent system, I'd say it works.)

What's bad, btw, is companies thinking that they have a right to their customers, and suing to get MORE customers. Talk about abuse of the legal system.

Obligatory... (Re: insane)

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, Monopolist sues YOU for anti-trust!

Shocking!

[ePhil_One]

Rambus believes that RDRAM was not the success it should have been because chip makers did not want to pay their royalties.

I can't imagine why any manufacturer would have done a thing like that.

Re:Shocking!

[DaHat]

Shame on them for not spending money on something they didn't think they needed.

In a related story, I plan to file suit against all readers of Slashdot who did not by the DaHat SuperFoo as I feel that you are all conspiring against me and it to make it fail and that it has nothing to do with the fact that the price per SuperFoo is more then any of you would want to pay.

Re:Shocking!

[jared_hanson]

In a related story, I plan to file suit against all readers of Slashdot who did not by the DaHat SuperFoo as I feel that you are all conspiring against me and it to make it fail and that it has nothing to do with the fact that the price per SuperFoo is more then any of you would want to pay.

If said SuperFoo can break up the sentence above into something understandable, I will pay any price. Really.

Re:Shocking!

[john82]

We have a fiduciary obligation to our shareholders to do something about this.

So, like SCO, Rambus' answer to problems of their own making is to sue their more successful competition. Perhaps Rambus' chief legal eagle has been reading Darl's book: "Waah, nobody likes me so I'm going to take your toys and go home."

Re:Shocking!

[Dr Caleb]

Rambus doesn't make anything, it's a collector of patents and distributor of licenses to use those patents. It is the SCO of the dot-bomb.

SCO probabally learned all there is to know about patent litigation as a revenue stream from Rambus. There have been many /. stories, around 1999 - 2000, about Rambus.

Re:Shocking!

[canfirman]

Are you sure Rambus and SCo don't have the same lawyers?

Re:Shocking!

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Sheesh.

I think these people had boring elementary education. One rule of the playground is that you don't bully other people then run to mommie when you get outbullied or the victims fight back. It makes you look stupid.

Someone said that RAMBUS is taking a cue from SCO, when it would be more likely that SCO took their legal strategy from RAMBUS. RAMBUS was extorting and racketeering memory manufacturers several years ago. The shit hit their fan in the form of a big judgement against them. Now they ar

The real truth

[imidazole2]

The real reason RAMBUS wasnt a success was because it was so fuggin expensive! Why pay extra money for a motherboard that supports it to pay 2x-4x the amount for the RAM as well? Nearly doubles the PC cost!

Re:The real truth

[shepd]

Worse yet, most RAMBUS had to be installed in pairs, while all other memory systems had switched over to single stick technology, doubling the cost.

Re:The real truth

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

And yet people will now willingly buy matched pairs of Dual Channel DDR... Can anyone say hypocracy?

We can say it, allright. Can anybody spell it?

;-)

Re:The real truth

[Durandal64]

Can anyone say, "oversimplification"? Rambus memory was a dismal failure because of a combination of things. It was stupidly expensive to manufacture with the price being passed on to the distributors and then consumers, no one wanted to pay the idiotic royalties, it was made by a shady, asinine company whose tax forms probably include more in legal fees than R&D and you had to buy it in pairs, thus doubling the cost of your memory upgrade. Meanwhile, DDR is cheap and available in both single- and dual-channel specifications.

Rambus simply wasn't going anywhere. Would you buy memory from a company that spent all its time suing people? It might have been fast then, but I due to its high manufacturing costs and Rambus' obsession with court rooms, I seriously doubt they'd have gone anywhere with it. DDR, on the other hand, is an open standard that evolves through cooperation and competition, not legal strong-arming.

Re:The real truth

[connorbd]

Rambus has nothing to do with Dual Channel. The operating principle behind Rambus seems to be the same basic principle as USB or Firewire vs. SCSI or IEEE 1284 -- a narrow connection is more flexible than a wide one, so you can get much more efficient gains for less trouble if you simply speed up a serial connection (FireWire) rather than trying to enhance a paralell connection (UltraSCSI).

Rambus memory channels are 16 bits wide vs. DDR and SDRAM 64 bit channels. The plan behind RDRAM was to use that 16-bit connection at a far higher speed than SDRAM for the same or better performance. The i820 chipset used single-channel RDRAM; the i850 used dual-channel, essentially dividing the memory into two banks because the Pentium 4 had the speed to access both at once. So you see, it is a chipset thing.

Re:The real truth

[zoombat]

The real reason RAMBUS wasnt a success was because it was so fuggin expensive!

That's the point. *WHY* was it so expensive? ...Rambus says it was because chip makers manipulated the price.

But *WHY* was it so expensive?

[raehl]

Yes, it failed because it was expensive, but RAMBUS contends it was expensive NOT because of their royalties, but because the memory manufacturers didn't want it to be successful, so the memory manufacturers got together and conspired to MAKE it expensive.

RAMBUS believes that without the alleged price collusion of the manufacturers artificially inflating the price of the RAMBUS memory, RAMBUS's technology would have been more competitive and thus would not have failed.

Illustratively, it would be like you designing this great processor that was better than the processors made by any other vendor that had some great technology in it that you had patented. Unfortunately, you don't have multi-billions of dollars to create a fab, so you need people like Intel and IBM to make your chip for you.

Intel and IBM don't want your new technology to become accepted though, as then they'd have to pay for it, so they take your chip, which costs $100 to make, and which they pay you $2 royalties on, and all agree to sell it for $800 per chip, while selling their own chips for $200.

The price if you were not charging royalties would by $798; the price if the manufacturers had not gotten together and agreed not to sell your chip for less than $800 would have been $202.

I'll tell you the REAL truth

[WebCowboy]

The REAL truth is that it was "fuggin expensive" in part due to royalty costs and in part due to the "collusion" that RAMBUS complains about. The problem is that RAMBUS management is too retarded to see the motive behind the collusion, which is what has to be established to prove the chip makers were acting illegally.

To put it briefly: RAMBUS invents a nifty new technology and thinks its kung-fu is so good that it patents the crap out of it and does a fancy dog and pony show to the linkes of Intel, Micron, Siemens and so on. Said show is well received and people get on board. When everyone is rip roarin' to go, RAMBUS says "oh yeah, we forgot to mention the little thing about our protection money---pay up or we'll break your kneecaps so you can never run again".

This is where the collusion comes in. Micron and other chip makers have a choice between the old, open standby PC100/PC133/SDR/DDR/whatever that is widely known and pretty much vendor neutral, or a new, incompatible and more expensive technology that puts their gonads squarely in the slowly clenching fists of RAMBUS (and Intel to some degree).

One company owns all the patents and gets all the royalties and can decide on a whim to jack up royalies or take away your license to use their technology on a whim. Based on RAMBUS's behaviour to that point who could blame the chip makers for shutting out RAMBUS en-masse? It didn't take great deal of effort and coordination for all parties to reach the same decision.

It's kind of ironic really. RAMBUS is whining about collusion and monopolistic practises of others because their attempt at monopolistic practises failed. This "collusion" wasn't driven by the desire to eliminate a competitor and cement market share, it was a common sense decision that any company would've made.

You'd think someone at RAMBUS would've heard the well worn case studies on Betamax video tape and IBMs MCA bus and avoided such bone-headedness. At least Sony didn't sue JVC, Panasonic and Toshiba because they preferred to make VHS machines instead of giving a cut of their profits to competitor Sony, and IBM didn't sue Compaq et al for creating their own EISA and VLB instead of buying MCA from IBM...

Royalties?

[slycer9]

The manufacturers didn't want to pay their royalties?

Think about that for a second. 'We weren't successful because they didn't want to pay for it.'

I tried that argument down at the Ducati dealer, didn't work there either.

Well, yes!

[pergamon]

Rambus believes that RDRAM was not the success it should have been because chip makers did not want to pay their royalties.

Well, uhm, yeah that's probably it. Deal with it, losers. Sheesh.

Don't want to spend. Imagine!

[Anonymous Coward]

They say vote with your wallet. Until you do. Then they sue your ass.

Priceless.

[DShard]

So I sue a set of companies who did not want to use a proprietary licensed technology over a open spec. I wonder if SCO's being giving them stupidity lessons.

Make no mistake...

[Anonymous Coward]

Rambus is accusing them of colluding to fix prices. The only novell aspect of their argument is that this wasn't to reap the higher profit margins but to force the market to adopt technology preferential to the manufactures not the market. That second part. I'm not so interested in.

Because price fixing is price fixing is price fixing. If Rambus can prove it let loose a smackdown. Particularly in North America. A smackdown so brutal and draconian, the member states of the WTO collectively crap themselves (the reverberations being at 82 cents above the lowest E flat). Either you want a market with price fixing or without it. I for one like voting with my wallet, perhaps other people are not so inclined.

Re:Make no mistake...

[anachattak]

This argument makes sense. Without getting into the whole debate on the merits/drawbacks of the Rambus memory design (which I don't REALLY understand and haven't researched), the case seems to come out like this:

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

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

Tortured logic ?????

[willtsmith]

So your saying that an effort by independent producers to thwart a semi-monopoly is collusion????

The fact is that JEDEC had been meeting well before Rambus came into being. They had been developing memory standards for a very long time. In fact, Rambus joined JEDEC and attempted to monopolize the memory market via seeding JEDEC processes with patented technologies.

JEDEC is not a cartel. They aren't trying to squeeze or force anyone in or out of a market. They are an open association of companies that work to their common benefit. Anyone can join provided they have the capital. Anyone can license the technology.

Better watch out. If the logic behind this suit is successfull, Microsoft will sue Linus Torvalds for a conspiracy to make Microsoft Windows IP worthless by artificially driving down prices with "givaway" products. Every Linux contributor would be a co-defendant.

Rambus memory ultimately failed because it was ill-tailored for most of the PC market. The vast majority of PC applications rely on massive numbers of low bandwidth memory operations. Rambus memory carried significant penalties for latency. It's only appropriate for high volume web servers and video processing applications.

Who knows

[SpiffyMarc]

Maybe RDRAM wasn't the success it should've been, because it was more expensive, and noone ever really adopted it?

No... no, that can't be it. We should sue!

Re:Who knows

[Milican]

OK, lets entertain the idea for a while. The article is stating that the reason the prices were higher is because the manufacturers illegally limited production. By limiting production the price of any one unit goes up. Its like buying a 6-pack of eggs or a case of eggs. With quantity the price goes down. Maybe this is true, maybe not. The userbase was certainly there. The industry backing was certaintly there. Intel had several chipsets out for P3 supporting the memory (i820 and others), PlayStation 2 uses the memory, etc... Guess we'll see what the court says. Please try and be objective.

JOhn

Re:Who knows

[homer_ca]

The PIII was not a good match for RDRAM. RDRAM had a faster transfer rate but more latency than SDRAM. With the chipsets of the day (i815, Apollo Pro 133A, i440BX overclocked to 133) PC133 was faster in most benchmarks. See for yourself, Anandtech still has their article [anandtech.com] online. By the time the P4 rolled around, it was a better match for RDRAM. The i850 boards were significantly faster than the SDRAM and DDR boards of the day, but by then most people wanted nothing more to do with Rambus.

Re:Who knows

[slipstick]

You aren't required to adopt any technology. However, if you conspire to NOT adopt something than that's collusion and should be fined/actionable. If they had all independantly decided they didn't like Rambus than that's o.k. But if you trade e-mails about how you should close them out of the market that's illegal.

I hope it didn't happen because Rambus is one hell of a f*(ked up company.

Sued for not working with a monopoly?

[Speare]

So, RAMBUS gets a government monopoly on a given process (by shady means, or not), and then it's somehow illegal when other companies decide to use other processes instead? Yeah, that makes sense.

Re:Sued for not working with a monopoly?

[zoombat]

then it's somehow illegal when other companies decide to use other processes instead?

It isn't simply that they decided not to use it, it's that they conspired with other companies in an illegal anti-competitive manner.. essentially saying, "I won't license with them if you don't." Or, at least that's what RAMBUS is claiming they did.

Just like any company can decide they want to cell a doohickey for $1000 more than everyone else, but if they conspire with the other doohickey vendors to all raise their price by $1000 so they can make nice profit, it's illegal.

Re:Sued for not working with a monopoly?

[Brandybuck]

Is doing market research and coming to the same conclusion as everyone else a conspiracy?

Never attribute to conspiracy what can be adequately explained by rational self-interest.

turn-about is fair play then?

[MMHere]

Wasn't Rambus accused of monopolistic behavior when their designs first appeared?

This smells like SCO -- if you can't compete, litigate!

Re:turn-about is fair play then?

[nomoreself]

This smells like SCO -- if you can't compete, litigate!

I represent Derek Smart, who patented the "if you can't compete, litigate" business model. If you do not cease your libelous references to this model, Mr. Smart will be forced to pursue legal action.

This is better than making $ on patents

[tbase]

1. Design a product 2. Ensure it's Overpriced 3. ??? 4. Profit!!!

Re:This is better than making $ on patents

[Short Circuit]

Design it? I don't think so...they patented a lot of stuff that was in open discussion at a technology conference.

BTW: 3. Sue

Huh? make up your mind.

[genericacct]

They blame a conspiracy to raise prices, and then they say chipmakers didn't want to pay Rambus licensing. You can't have it both ways... it's obviously your own fault if your licensing is too expensive.

Re:Huh? make up your mind.

[Mr Guy]

Not exactly. They are claiming that the chip makers deliberating conspired to make their chip FAIL because of higher prices because the chip makers weren't getting the profit margin they wanted on them.

It may very well be true, but it could easily be that all the chip makers said, Screw this we don't get the profit we want individually. The catch is that RDRAM really was much better, so the argument is none of them would have neglected it if they hadn't agreed to collectively neglect it, which is illegal.

Re:Huh? make up your mind.

[HiThere]

Except that most people here have been denying that it was better, except in certain cases. And, in particular, they've been denying that it was better for gaming, which is were many of the rather high end $$$ go.

Re:Huh? make up your mind.

[mangastudent]

[...] most people here have been denying that it was better, except in certain cases.

Specifically (and this is all from memory):

Its big advantage was streaming, pumping out a very fast flow of sequential bits. Intel and others were at the time enamored of "convergence" (e.g. playing movies on your computer, which we now know is evil :-), and it was thought this was a good thing for multimedia.

Except there were of course tradeoffs: you paid several prices in addition to the royalties. The two kille

Re:Huh? make up your mind.

[ottffssent]

RDRAM tech may have been better (in theory), but the implementations available certainly weren't.

i820, anyone?

The only volume chipset I recall that was faster with RDRAM was the dual-channel i840 (I think that's the right number). It was only a smidge faster, and only for a short while before DDR boards caught back up. And it cost an arm and a leg and at least your neighbor's first-born.

Better, aye, but at too high a cost. Intel had contractual obligations to push RDRAM, but everyone else in the marke

Even if it were true...

[Short Circuit]

There's no reason not to expect RAM makers to retaliate after what Rambus did at that technology conference.

Fuck You, Rambus.

[Anonymous Coward]

People didn't adopt your technology because
1) It sucked.
2) It was highly overrated.
3) It was overpriced.
4) You are a deceitful bunch of motherfuckers who nobody trusts.

Or just maybe... maybe...

[Faust7]

Rambus believes that RDRAM was not the success it should have been because chip makers did not want to pay their royalties.

Or maybe it was because it was too expensive and better alternatives existed?

Ever consider that one, legal geniuses at Rambus?

Re:Or just maybe... maybe...

[IceAgeComing]

``We can't ignore the strength of this evidence,'' said Rambus general counsel John Danforth. ``We have a fiduciary obligation to our shareholders to do something about this.''

Well, if its a fiduciary obligation, then he must be really smart, and he must know what he's talking about. So, he's probably right. I know he doesn't mention the evidence, probably because I'm too dumb to understand it if he did.

I've learned that people who use fancy words on TV are really important, and others usually try not to get in their way. Because they're so right. It wouldn't make sense to get in the way of someone who's so right.

And the problem is who?

[jared_hanson]

Rambus believes that RDRAM was not the success it should have been because chip makers did not want to pay their royalties.

So, this it is clearly the chipmakers fault then, huh?

Rambus should learn some basic business strategy. If someone comes out with a slightly less quality product, but sells it for a lot cheaper, that product will win. So, recognize the problem and lower your prices or significantly raise the benefits of paying them. In either case, don't resort to frivilous lawsuits if things don't go your way.

Re:And the problem is who?

[Lehk228]

especially when the "slightly less quality" performs better for a major portion of the market, Rambus sucks for gaming, alot of RAM is purchased for gaming (what you think I have a Gig of ram so i can open 250 copies of notepad with no swapfile?)

That's rich!

[Anonymous Coward]

The only company violating anti-trust laws was RAMBUS! Entering into a standards committe and submitting technology while secretly patenting it is not only evil, it's illegal due to antitrust law.

And the reason their RAM cost so damn much is because of their royalty arrangements which most companies refused to enter into. And at the time RAMBUS was touting the profit margins on their products over DDR as a benefit and reason that companies should sell it!

Bastards.

What a tired strategy.

[Luscious868]

Oh, please. Typical mentality. "Well it couldn't possibly be the fact that my product totally stunk. It was clearly something else, so I'll sue". Enough is enough. I'm sick and tired of this crap.

Rambus believes...

[sdo1]

Rambus believes that RDRAM was not the success it should have been because chip makers did not want to pay their royalties.

The rest of us believe that the existing technology delivered acceptable levels of performance for far less money.

-S

Sorry Rambus.

[hal2814]

You don't have a God-given right to collect royalties from people who would rather use a different technology.

If by "fix prices" you mean keep prices high because that is what is necessary to make a profit because other technologies that are almost as good are far cheaper, then the companies being sued by Rambus had better watch out.

Re:Sorry Rambus.

[ThisIsFred]

Interesting, I see a lot of posts detailing collusion between RAM chip makers. Do our anti-trust laws apply to companies overseas? If so, how come we haven't gone after DeBeers or Saudi Arabia's monarchy yet? Both of those represent the heads of the worst, most abusive cartels imaginable.

Intel and Rambus

[augustz]

Intel was the company with the existing market clout that tried to force Rambus and their IP down everyone's throats.

I realize that in business these days it is not normal to consider how much of a scum your business partners may or may not be.

But for long term business I think it is worth review. We have to ask, in the end is the world going to be a better place because Intel and Rambus tried lock up a standards process in patents.

Folks need a longer memory then they get from playing XBOX games. These companies have histories.

How quickly Betamax is forgotten

[tommasz]

Hey Rambus, there's a lesson you should have learned from your ol' pal Sony. Ask them what happened to their Betamax format.

Seriously, "cheap but good enough" almost always manages to beat "expensive and techically superior." Apple might be an exception, but that's open to debate. Too bad Rambus didn't read the history books.

Re:How quickly Betamax is forgotten

[squarooticus]

Seriously, "cheap but good enough" almost always manages to beat "expensive and techically superior." Apple might be an exception, but that's open to debate.

Um... as far as I can tell, the debate is pretty much over: Windows owns over 90% of the personal computer market, with Apple and Linux filling niche roles.

Windows = cheap but good enough.
Apple = pretty and technically superior, but expensive.
Linux = cheap and technically superior, but much harder to setup and use.

Re:How quickly Betamax is forgotten

[frozenray]

> "cheap but good enough" almost always manages to beat "expensive and technically superior."

RDRAM was "technically superior" in theory, but as far as I remember the supposed performance benefits didn't have a significant enough impact on total system performance with the then-current chipsets to justify the huge price difference.

RDRAM looked promising at first, with Intel as the primary backer, but Rambus and Intel thourougly screwed up its introduction. This is how I remember it:

1. RDRAM was hideously expensive
2. Rambus used a "submarine patent" [newsfactor.com] and got the whole DRAM industry up in arms about that
3. Price/performance ratio was bad
4. Chipsets with RDRAM support were expensive and only Intel jumped on the bandwagon initially (and with rather buggy chipsets [com.com] to boot)
5. As a result, DDR-SDRAM was quickly announced, and RDRAM was history

I suppose the next steps would be:

6. Realize that your product is deader than a doornail
7. Sue the hell out of every major player in the industry
8. PROFIT???

To me, this looks more like the rest of the industry protecting themselves against Rambus' predatory practices and general ineptitude to bring a promising product to market. Perhaps suing Infineon and others wasn't the most brilliant move if they wanted to make RDRAM a success?

I wonder..

[gonar]

did it ever enter their tiny little heads that the reason that their wunder-patent didn't sell as well as their very carefully crafted market research said it should have, might just have something to do with the fact that the CONSUMER (not the producer, they just pass the cost on) didn't want to pay their licence fee (100% price markup) for a product which provided minimal benefit in certain limited cases and a large handicap in a great many (more commonly encountered) cases?

stupid corporation, hopefully they and all the other "IP" companies will go the way of the tyrannosaurus rex (i.e. screaming in agony as a giant fireball from space lands on their heads)

OK think of it as costs

[silas_moeckel]

The chip makers didn't want to pay there royalties oh darn they arent supposed to want to pay them. Rambus died because it was to expensive and it was to expensive because there were huge royalties gee shucks I guess another company with a brain dead business model. Rambus wasent good enough to compete at the prices. Yes at the time it was better but just wasent that much better.

If you want to take over a market you cant just be somewhat better it cant be a evolutionary better it needs to be revolutionary. They wernt and they had stiff compotition and bad business practices with there partners as well.

Time for the old pump-and-dump!

[Anonymous Coward]

OK its a sign that they've reached the near death stage. Nothing left to do but pull the old pump-and-dump routine to screw a last few suckers before the end.

I wish there was a way to make the corp execs and legal teams like 10x PERSONALLY liable for this kind of bullshit behavior

The SCO school of success!

[jerky42]

Looks like they have been going to the SCO charm school. I bet SCO sues them for stealing business secrets.

Competition

[MysteriousMystery]

Their argument appears to be "These companies didn't want to pay us, so they used a competiting product. So we're sueing to make up the money we didn't make from not trying to be competitive in the open market."

anti-trust v. royalty pricing

[daevt]

for it to be an anti-trust issue, the companies would have had to have been purposefully colluding to effect the price (commonly called 'price-fixing') of the good (rambus memory). if they didn't produce large enough quantities to make rambus acceptible as a widely adopteble standard because the royalties made the technology inaccessibly priced (high royalties mean the profit margin shrinks, and can become negative...) , this is not a trust. the claims in the blurb are contradictory, and if they are the claims of rambus, then the case is trying to blame somebody else because a certain someone shot themself in the proverbial foot with excesive royalties...

did not want to pay their royalties

[zakezuke]

...illegally conspired to limit production and raise prices in an effort to block widespread adoption of Rambus' technology.' Rambus believes that RDRAM was not the success it should have been because chip makers did not want to pay their royalties."

I can say in all honesty that I didn't buy rambus because the cost was too damn high. I strongly suspect that chipmakers didn't want to sell an overpriced product, and focused on what consumers demanded. From my understanding AMD is outselling intel [slashdot.org], and also near as i'm aware rambus isn't even an option for AMD supporting chipsets.

I'm damn sure chip makers didn't want to pay royalities, but this is neither immoral nor illegal when there is a viable cheeper alterantive.

Cited EMAILS?!

[Short Circuit]

In its lawsuit, Rambus cites a series of e-mails dating from 1996 in which executives at Hynix, Siemens (nyse: SI - news - people ) and Micron (nyse: MU - news - people ) discussed...

Where in hell did they get those emails from? Did they fabricate them?

The sad thing is

[Quila]

RDRAM was some pretty interesting technology, and very helpful in getting high-speed memory for things that needed it, such as game consoles and servers.

Too bad it was invented by such a nasty company with no vision.

I believe the appropriate saying is...

[payndz]

"Boo fucking hoo."

Oh, and "This is the world's smallest violin playing just for Rambus."

By this logic, Nintendo could sue Sony for luring gamers and developers away from the N64 to the PS1 because they didn't want to pay the costs of cartridges over CDs!

It's funny how companies turn against the supposed benefits of the free market when it stops working in their favour, isn't it?

If you design a widget that you think guarantees you a fortune, and then somebody comes up with a better and cheaper widget that everyone uses instead, then that's really tough shit on you. Innovate, not litigate.

Amazing...

[Millennium]

Rambus believes that RDRAM was not the success it should have been because chip makers did not want to pay their royalties.

You know, I think they may be onto something...

In all seriousness, this is exactly why it flopped: people didn't want to pay exorbitant pseudo-taxes to a single vendor. Of course, they do it all the time with Microsoft, but maybe there's something different about RAM. I don't know.

Supporting Evidence

[Red Leader.]

Ironically, most of the posts in this story corroborate the plaintiff's charge - that manufacturers limited production to create an artificial scarcity which drove prices of Rambus memory up. You can't counter the argument that nobody adopted Rambus technology because it was too expensive when the charge is that it was collusion on the part of manufacturers to artificially drive up price and prevent widespread adoption. Talk about logically shooting yourself in the foot...

Reading the article, it sounds like memory manufacturers could have colluded against Rambus. In my book, if none of the manufacturers independently wanted to produce Rambus memory and they communicated this fact that amongst themselves, that's not collusion. The details of who said what and at what time, though, are definitely something that will be worked out over the coming years. Depending on the nature of the communications and their timing, this could in fact be determined to look like collusion. If each firm can individually show why they didn't care to produce more Rambus memory, though, I think the case will fail.

Mind you, I'm not saying that I like Rambus, their practices, or anything - just that they perhaps do have a case. Only time will tell.

Re:Supporting Evidence

[phamNewan]

Uhhh, I am pretty sure that the different in expense was converting to a new technology that required more process steps, and required larger die than DRAM.

The array between SDRAM, DDR, DDR2 is nothing, only the periphery changes. For rambus, everything changes, hence the size is larger, larger size mean less die per wafer, and higher cost. The only way Rambus could have worked was if there was no alternative. There was, they lost.

This years crybaby award

[earthforce_1]

Leading candidates are SCO and Rambus

They didn't buy enough licences from me! My business is failing because they conspired against me! They won't pay me what I want! Waaaaah, call my lawyer!

(Can we vote on this in the next slashdot poll, and Fed-ex the trophy to the winning company's head office?)

The joys of being fabless

[Politicus]

The real problem with Rambus was the they were competing in a market space against the very same companies that they required to make their products. Had they found the fab capacity to pump out RDRAM, it is very likely that prices would have come down. Technical advantage of RDRAM could then compete against DDRAM memory made by Infineon and others.

This problem was evident from day one. The fact that they didn't go through the trouble to secure independent production capacity to keep the other manufacturers honest just goes to show that they wanted to have their cake and eat it too. Doing so would have slimmed RDRAM profit margins but definitely insured that lack of supply doesn't kill their product.

It's a case of greed ruining their business model.

I'm surprised that Intel bought into this mess. Just goes to show that for all their glitz, Intel can be a bunch of geeks sometimes.

What if it's true?

[erroneus]

The fact is, whether or not it is presently recognized in a court of law, just about every feels that Rambus has behaved very unethically by inserting their designs and failing to disclose they are patented and could be held liable for using these "adopted industry standards."

Now everyone who makes Rambus stuff has to pay Rambus. Great! But what if you don't want to use Rambus? Correct! Make something else! What else is there to do but go back to the drawing board and agree upon yet another new standard that is free of patent issues!

If it's illegal to do that the second time, why wasn't it illegal to do it the first time when they all banded together to agree upon a singular design standard?

What a bizarre legal theory!

[Eric Smith]

The fact that Rambus owns some patents does not in any way obligate memory vendors to license those patents, or to produce any particular amount of product using them. If Rambus had a contract with a particular memory vendor, and the vendor failed to meet their obligations under the contract, Rambus would have grounds to sue them for breach of contract, but this is not an antitrust issue.

dang...another one of those "best case" issues

[MoFoQ]

Just like the RIAA, Rambus is blaming others for their own failures. The reason why Rambus (RDRAM) wasn't widely adopted was because it was an inferior product. Sure, in hypothetical and synthetic cases, RDRAM did outperform SDRAM, but in the real world, it got it's ass handed to them. (remember back in the day when Via had to fight Intel to be able to release a P3-compatible chipset using SDRAM? And how Via's low-end chipset was able to pounce Intel's expensive Rambus one and Intel eventually came to the realization that in order to compete, they would have to ditch Rambus). That combined with the expensive cost of RDRAM (even the ones maded by licensed RDRAM manufacturers like Samsung, etc.) and the disadvantage that you had to buy in pairs (talk about antitrust; "Sorry sir, you have to buy TWO copies of Windows for one to work.") or use a dummy stick which adds more cost and lackluster performance across real world appz (including games) lead to its demise. Not to mention, the abandonment by Intel which caused Rambus's stock to be cheaper than the Russian rubble (already used as toilet paper).

If anyone, they should sue themselves for bad business practices. Oh wait, the stockholders did try to sue but later dropped [com.com] it.

This story....

[Kjella]

....reminds me a lot of ISA vs MCA during the late 80s/early 90s. The MCA was better, but a pain to licence from IBM. What happened? The industry came together, made EISA. Except IBM had more brains than to sue over it.

I read the benchmarks for Rambus. The performance gains were noticable, but not stunning. They fell for nothing other than the chicken and egg problem. Since RAM producers didn't believe in Rambus on the mass market, there was no cheap mass production. Since there was no cheap mass production, it failed on the mass market. Self-fulfilling prediction.

It's like every other technology in the computer industry, it either has to hit critical mass or be overrun. SCSI was supposed to take over for IDE. What happened? PIO->UDMA->SATA and it just keeps going, SCSI is only holding their own on servers. Likewise with SDRAM->DDR->DDR-2, it simply evolved past the supposed "conqueror".

There was no foul play here. Rambus went up against momentum, and lost. Hell, even Intel appears to have lost it with the Itanic. With x86-64 and IA32e, momentum has spoken. People are used to computers improving all the time already. If you want them to change, you need either backwards compatibility or a small miracle in performance.

Kjella

thick as thieves

[l33t-gu3lph1t3]

Believe it or not, Rambus corporation is likely no more unethical in their business practices as the DRAM manufacturers - see the Micron and Hynix squabble, with accompanying governmental levies and fines. Look to the fact that at least a few governments have cartel investigations on the books against these corporations.

Here is what can be stated most objectively:
-Rambus's RDRAM technology was, and is, technologically interesting
-The console gaming makers realized this and have used it extensively
-Intel designed the P4 around it - obviously there's some good ideas there
-Compared to conventional DRAM technology, RDRAM is unique in that it improves its latency characteristics with every generation. Have you guys read any technical documents about DDR and DDR2? DDR2 scales very poorly: latencies and timings get looser and looser while overall MHz speeds increment more and more slowly.
-To get any real benefit from DDR2 you need a dual-channel configuration which requires prohibitively complex board designs and more pcb layers on the mainboard. Compare this with RDRAM, with its lower pincount and simplified board design.

-Due to Rambus Inc's pariah status, Intel had to shy away from them. However, even Intel couldn't ignore the merits of Rambus technology and is developing a new DRAM tech suscpiciously similiar in nature to RDRAM: FB-DIMM.

One can find a good overview of FB-DIMM "fully buffered dual inline memory module" technology here:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15167
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15189
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15214
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15379
Peace

Re:thick as thieves

[twistedcubic]

And even if this is all true, so what? Let's all give Rambus mad props, but as long as we don't infringe their patents, why should we be concerned with them? Just because you think someone is brilliant doesn't mean you have to pay them royalties.

Re:thick as thieves

[bani]

the main problem with rdram is that it is EXPENSIVE to produce. doesnt matter how technologically superior your product is if it cant be produced cheaply enough to crack the market.

sort of like how AMD is killing off the Itanium. not because amd64 is better technologically, but because it doesn't cost $2000 for the lowest cost entry level cpu.

rdram might allow for simpler motherboard designs, but the memory is still extremely expensive to produce.

fact is, regardless of whatever technological advantages r

Re:thick as thieves

[BCW2]

I don't think that NForce2 boards are prohibitivley expensive. They come in lower than several high end P4 boards with or without Rambus memeory.

Rambus can't compete with DDR because the total price is too high by comparison. CPU, memmory, and motherboard make any comparible DDR systems cheaper. A P4 with DDR can perform very close to a P4 with Rambus. Add AMD to the equation and except for a hardcore gamer people wouldn't even notice the difference except in their wallets.

Sure it's better technology, but

Stupid RAMBUS -- they killed themselves with greed

[aeoo]

Ah, if only RAMBUS did not decide to backstab the JEDEC members, perhaps we would all be happily using RDRAM now. But RAMBUS had to squeeze every last cent, legally or illegally, ethically or unethically, and now it's reaping what it sowed. Can you say Karma?

I wish companies would realize that ethical conduct is not an optional part of doing business.

Failed business model lawsuits are funny.

[Lord Kano]

Rambus believes that RDRAM was not the success it should have been because chip makers did not want to pay their royalties.

Well, they're probably right. They thought that they could corner the market and be the only show in town. They were wrong, people opted not to pay their royalties when their patent frenzy failed.

Companies chose to go with technologies that didn't include the Rambus tax. Tough shit for them. Live with it.

LK

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:high prices

[Neil Blender]

Pretty much supply and demand. Here is a good explanation [crucial.com]

Re:high prices

[nelsonal]

Oddly enough the fluctuating prices on RAM mean you are overall getting a much better deal on your memory than on your processor.
Basically the constant decline in prices of processors is explained by Intel's ever declining unit costs. Intel can mark up processors by a fairly constant amount, as their costs decline due to things like R&D and factory costs being spread over a now exceedingly large number of units, those costs have declined. They can also affort to invest in the cutting edge technologie