Rambus

Rambus Incorporated (founded 1990) is a provider of high-speed interface technology, most notably their Rambus Direct RAM memory technology, which was intended to replace SDRAM and challenge DDR SDRAM as the standard memory used in computers.

Licensing

As a company with no chip production facilites of its own, Rambus conducts business by filing patents, and then licensing technologies. For example, Nintendo licensed Rambus memory for the N64 console. However, the most famous agreement was with Intel Corporation in 1996, under which Intel became obligated to use RDRAM as the primary memory technology for all Intel platforms until 2002.

In exchange for this, Intel was given a cut of Rambus's royalties, which Intel management anticipated would be a lucrative source of high margin revenue. In reality, the RDRAM standard did not prove to be popular, and motherboard manufacturers simply bought chipsets from VIA Technologies, which supported SDRAM technology. Ironically in this manner, one of the most enduring achievements of Rambus was to facilitate the rise of VIA Technologies.

In addition to Intel, SIS also licensed RDRAM, which was used in the SIS R658 chip set. However, it was never popular. The proposed SIS R659, which supports 4 channels of 16-bit 1200MHz RDRAM, was only available as prototype.

Technology

The first PC motherboards with support for RDRAM debuted in 1999. They supported PC800 RDRAM, which operated at 800 MHz and delivered 1600 MB/s of bandwidth over a 16 bit bus using a 184 pin RIMM form factor. This was significantly faster than the previous standard, PC133 SDRAM, which operated at 133 Mhz and delivered 1066 MB/s of bandwidth over a 64 bit bus using a 168 pin DIMM form factor.

Some downsides of RDRAM technology, however, included significantly increased latency, heat output, manufacturing complexity, and cost. PC800 RDRAM operated with a latency of 45ns, compared to only 7.5ns for PC133 SDRAM. RDRAM memory chips also put out significantly more heat than SDRAM chips, necessitating heatsinks on all RIMM devices. RDRAM also includes a memory controller on each memory chip, significantly increasing manufacturing complexity compared to SDRAM, which used a single memory controller located on the northbridge chipset. RDRAM was also two to three times the price of PC133 SDRAM due to a combination of high manufacturing costs and high license fees. DDR SDRAM, introduced in 2000, operated at an effective clockspeed of 266 MHz and delivered 2100 MB/s over a 64-bit bus using a 184 pin DIMM form factor.

With the introduction of the i850 chipset, Intel added support for dual-channel PC800 RDRAM, doubling bandwidth to 3200 MB/s by increasing the bus width to 32 bit. This was followed in 2002 by the i850E chipset, which introduced PC1066 RDRAM, increasing total dual-channel bandwidth to 4200 MB/s. Also in 2002, Intel released the E7205 Granitebay chipset, which introduced dual-channel DDR support for a total bandwidth of 4200 MB/s, but at a much lower latency than competing RDRAM. In 2003, Intel released the i875P chipset, and along with it dual-channel DDR400. With a total bandwidth of 6400 MB/s, it marked the end of RDRAM as a technology with competitive performance.

Lawsuits

In the early 1990s, Rambus was invited to join the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council. Rambus had been trying to interest memory manufacturers in licensing their proprietary memory interface, and all companies had signed non-disclosure agreements to view Rambus' technical data. During the later Infineon v. Rambus trial, Infineon memos from a meeting with representatives of other manufacturers surfaced, including the line "^*ne day all computers will be built this way, but hopefully without the royalties going to Rambus," and continuing with a strategy discussion for reducing or eliminating royalties to be paid to Rambus. As Rambus continued its participation in JEDEC, it became apparent that they were not prepared to agree to JEDEC's patent policy requiring owners of intellectual property included in a standard to agree to license that technology under terms that are "reasonable and non-discriminatory", and Rambus withdrew from the organization in 1995. Memos from Rambus at that time showed they were tailoring new patent applications to cover features of SDRAM being discussed, which were public knowledge (JEDEC meetings were not considered secret) and perfectly legal for patent owners who have patented underlying innovations, but were seen as evidence of bad faith by the jury in the first Infineon v. Rambus trial. The Federal Court of Appeals rejected this theory of bad faith in its decision overturning the fraud conviction Infineon achieved in the first trial (see below).

In 2000, Rambus began filing lawsuits against the largest memory manufacturers, claiming that they owned SDRAM and DDR technology. Seven manufacturers, including Samsung, quickly settled with Rambus and agreed to pay royalties on SDRAM and DDR memory. When Rambus sued Infineon Technologies, however, Micron and Hynix joined forces with Infineon to fight the lawsuit, countersuing with claims of fraud. This trio of memory manufacturers became known as "The Three Amigos". In May 2001, Rambus was found guilty of fraud for having claimed that they owned SDRAM and DDR technology, and all infringement claims against memory manufacturers were dismissed. In January 2003, the Federal Court of Appeals overturned the fraud verdict of the jury trial in Virginia under Judge Payne, issued a new claims construction, and remanded the case back to Virginia for re-trial on infringement. In October 2003, the US Supreme Court refused to hear the case. Thus, the case returned to Virginia per the Federal Court of Appeals ruling.

In January 2005, Rambus filed four more lawsuits against memory chip makers Hynix Semiconductor, Nanya Technology, Inotera Memories and Infineon Technology claiming that DDR 2, GDDR 2 and GDDR 3 chips contain Rambus technology. In March 2005, Rambus had its claim for patent infringements against Infineon dismissed. Rambus was accused of shredding key documents prior to court hearings, the judge agreed and dismissed Rambus's case against Infineon. This sent Rambus to the settlement table with Infineon. Infineon has agreed to pay Rambus quarterly license fees of $5.9m and in return, both companies ceased all litigation against each other. The agreement runs from November 2005 to November 2007. After this date, if Rambus has enough other agreements in place, Infineon may make extra payments up to $100m. Currently, cases involving Micron and Hynix remain in court. In June 2005, Rambus also sued one of its strongest proponents, Samsung, the world's largest memory manufacturer, and terminated Samsung's license. Samsung had promoted Rambus's RDRAM and currently remains a licensee of Rambus's XDR memory.

In May 2002, the United Stated Federal Trade Commission filed charges against Rambus for antitrust violations. Specifically, the FTC Complaint asserted that through the use of patent continuations and divisionals, Rambus pursued a strategy of expanding the scope of its patent claims to encompass the emerging SDRAM standard. The FTC's antitrust allegations against Rambus went to trial in the summer of 2003 after the organisation formally accused Rambus of anti-competitive behaviour the previous June, itself the result of an investigation launched in May 2002 at the behest of the memory manufacturers. The FTC's chief administrative law judge dismissed the antitrust claims against Rambus in 2004, saying that the memory industry had no reasonable alternatives to Rambus technology and was aware of the potential scope of Rambus patent rights, according to the company. Soon after, FTC investigators filed a brief to appeal against that ruling.

In 2004 Infineon plead guilty to price-fixing in an attempt to bury Rambus and force RDRAM out of the market. They later paid a fine of $160 million dollars. Hynix and Samsung/Micron followed suit in 2005 and paid $185 million and $300 million respectively. Elpida is the most recent company to plead guilty and paid a fine of $85 million, the lowest of all memory manufacturers. It is widely believed that the evidence collected during the FTC's investigation of Rambus lead directly to the guilty pleas.

Game consoles

The Nintendo 64 was the first video game console to use RDRAM memory. It is equipped with 4 MB of 500 MHz RDRAM. The Expansion Pak adds an additional 4 MB of RDRAM, bringing the total to 8 MB.

32MB of RDRAM was used in Sony's PlayStation 2 video game console, and as of 2005, Sony and Rambus have announced ^* that the PlayStation 3 will use Rambus's XDR memory and a processor bus interface from Rambus called FlexIO.

Management Team

Harold Hughes, Chief Executive Officer
Robert Eulau, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
John Danforth, Senior Vice President and General Counsel
Sharon Holt, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales, Licensing and Marketing
Dr. Mark Horowitz, Chief Scientist
Ira Blumberg, Vice President Licensing
Kevin Donnelly, Vice President Engineering
Tim Messegee, Vice President Corporate Marketing
Samir Patel, Vice President Engineering
Kent Richardson, Vice President Intellectual Property
Eric Ries, Vice President and Managing Director, Rambus Japan
Michael Schroeder, Vice President Human Resources
Laura Stark, Senior Vice President Platform Solutions Group

External links

Computer memory | Electronics companies of the United States | Fabless semiconductor companies | Companies based in the Silicon Valley

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