Rambus Incorporated
Type	Public (NASDAQ: RMBS)
Founded	1990
Headquarters	4440 El Camino Real Los Altos, California United States
Key people	Harold Hughes, Chief Executive Officer
Services	kfgjg5448
Revenue	kj'
Website	www.rambus.com

Rambus Incorporated (NASDAQ: RMBS), founded in 1990, is a provider of high-speed interface technology, most notably their Rambus Dynamic RAM memory technology, which was intended to replace SDRAM and challenge DDR SDRAM as the standard memory used in computers. Image File history File links Unbalanced_scales. ... Direct Rambus DRAM or DRDRAM (sometimes just called Rambus DRAM or RDRAM) is a type of synchronous dynamic RAM, designed by the Rambus Corporation. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... NASDAQ in Times Square, New York City. ... Year 1990 (MCMXC) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 1990 Gregorian calendar). ... Los Altos (IPA: ) is a city at the southern end of the San Francisco Peninsula, in the San Francisco Bay Area. ... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... “Chief executive” redirects here. ... This article is about a term used in economics. ... Look up revenue in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML... NASDAQ in Times Square, New York City. ... Year 1990 (MCMXC) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 1990 Gregorian calendar). ... Direct Rambus DRAM or DRDRAM (sometimes just called Rambus DRAM or RDRAM) is a type of synchronous dynamic RAM, designed by the Rambus Corporation. ... SDRAM means synchronous dynamic random access memory which is a type of solid state computer memory. ... DDR SDRAM or double-data-rate synchronous dynamic random access memory is a type of memory integrated circuit used in computers. ... For other uses, see Memory (disambiguation). ... This article is about the machine. ...

History

Rambus, a California company, was incorporated in 1990 and re-incorporated in Delaware in 1997. The company was listed on Nasdaq in 1997 under the code RMBS. As of February 2006, Rambus derived the majority of its annual revenue by licensing patents for chip interfaces to its customers . NASDAQ in Times Square, New York City. ...

Companies such as AMD, Elpida, Infineon, Intel, Matsushita, NECEL, Renesas, Sony, and Toshiba have taken licenses to Rambus patents for use in their own products.^[1] Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. ... Elpida Karali (Greek: Ελπίδα; English translation: Hope) is a Greek singer, being a two-times entrant to the Eurovision Song Contest. ... Infineon Technologies is a German manufacturer of integrated circuits and related products. ... Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC, SEHK: 4335), founded in 1968 as Integrated Electronics Corporation, is an American multinational corporation that is best known for designing and manufacturing microprocessors and specialized integrated circuits. ... Logo for the Panasonic brand Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. ... Renesas Technology Corp. ... Sony Corporation ) is a Japanese multinational corporation and one of the worlds largest media conglomerates with revenue of $66. ... Toshiba Corporations headquarters (Center) in Hamamatsucho, Tokyo Toshiba Corporation sales by division for year ending March 31, 2005 Toshiba Corporation ) (TYO: 6502 ) is a Japanese multinational conglomerate manufacturing company, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. ...

Rambus' share price has ranged between a high of nearly $150 in 2000 to a low of approx. $3 in 2003 with a 4:1 split on June 15, 2000. is the 166th day of the year (167th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full 2000 Gregorian calendar). ...

Licensing

As a company with no chip production facilities 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. A fabless semiconductor company specializes in the design and sale of hardware devices implemented on semiconductor chips. ... Nintendo Company, Limited (任天堂 or ニンテンドー Nintendō; NASDAQ: NTDOY, TYO: 7974 usually referred to as simply Nintendo, or Big N ) is a multinational corporation founded on September 23, 1889[1] in Kyoto, Japan by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce handmade hanafuda cards. ... An N64 (with Super Smash Bros. ... Intel redirects here. ...

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 which supported SDRAM technology from VIA Technologies rather than more expensive RDRAM chipsets from Intel. Ironically in this manner, one of the most enduring achievements of Rambus was to facilitate the rise of VIA Technologies by creating a lucrative market vacuum. A motherboard is the central or primary circuit board making up a complex electronic system, such as a modern computer. ... VIA Technologies logo VIA Technologies is a Taiwanese manufacturer of integrated circuits, mainly motherboard chipsets, CPUs, and memory, and is part of the Formosa Plastics Group. ...

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 (TYPE). Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) is a company that manufactures, among other things, motherboards. ... Direct Rambus DRAM or DRDRAM (sometimes just called Rambus DRAM or RDRAM) is a type of synchronous dynamic RAM, designed by the Rambus Corporation. ...

As the market for RDRAM was overtaken, Rambus developed new memory interfaces for high speed activity and has continued to license these. Rambus has targeted the graphics card industry and licensed its technology to Sony for incorporation into Cell Technology as implemented with Play Station 3. It also developed PCI Express interfaces and in 2006 it licensed its XDR DRAM memory controller to Toshiba.^[2] The PlayStation 3 (PS3) will be Sonys seventh generation era video game console in the PlayStation series. ... PCI Express (formerly known as 3GIO for 3rd Generation I/O, not to be mistaken with PCI-X) is an implementation of the PCI computer bus that uses existing PCI programming concepts and communications standards, but bases it on a much faster serial communications system. ... XDR DRAM is a high performance RAM Interface like SDR-SDRAM and DDR-SDRAM. The XDR solution was engineered to be effective in small high-bandwidth consumer systems, high-performance main memory applications, and flagship GPUs. ... Toshiba Corporations headquarters (Center) in Hamamatsucho, Tokyo Toshiba Corporation sales by division for year ending March 31, 2005 Toshiba Corporation ) (TYO: 6502 ) is a Japanese multinational conglomerate manufacturing company, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. ...

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. Bandwidth is the difference between the upper and lower cutoff frequencies of, for example, a filter, a communication channel, or a signal spectrum, and is typically measured in hertz. ... Form factor refers to the linear dimensions and configuration of a device as distinguished from other measures of size (for example Gigabytes; a measure of storage size): in computing, form factor is used to describe the size and format of PC motherboards (see AT, ATX, BTX), but also of hard... Two types of DIMMs: a 168-pin SDRAM module (top) and a 184-pin DDR SDRAM module (bottom). ...

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. RAM Latency is the amount of wait time that a computer experiences when trying to access data in its RAM. RAM latency is measured in front side bus clock cycles. ... A large copper heatsink. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...

With the introduction of the i840 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. This is a list of computer motherboard chipsets made by Intel. ... This is a list of computer motherboard chipsets made by Intel. ... This is a list of computer motherboard chipsets made by Intel. ...

Rambus survived the obsolesence of RDRAM and moved to support DDR and DDR2 in the area of video card technology and in particular, PCI Express. Rambus developed and licensed its XDR RAM technology. XDR DRAM is a high performance RAM Interface like SDR-SDRAM and DDR-SDRAM. The XDR solution was engineered to be effective in small high-bandwidth consumer systems as well as in high-performance main memory applications. ...

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 numerous 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 “[O]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 patents included in a standard to agree to license that technology under terms that are ‘reasonable and non-discriminatory’,^[3] 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). JEDEC stands for Joint Electron Device Engineering Council and is the semiconductor engineering standardization body of the Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA), a trade association that represents all areas of the electronics industry. ... A non-disclosure agreement (NDA), also called a confidential disclosure agreement (CDA), confidentiality agreement or secrecy agreement, is a legal contract between at least two parties which outlines confidential materials or knowledge the parties wish to share with one another for certain purposes, but wish to restrict from generalized use. ... Infineon Technologies AG (ISIN: DE0006231004, FWB: IFX, NYSE: IFX) was founded in April 1999 when the semiconductor operations of parent company, Siemens AG, were spun off to form a separate legal entity. ... The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, or simply the Federal Circuit, was founded in 1982 to combine similar federal cases to a specialized appellate court. ...

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. Samsung Group is one of the largest South Korean business groupings. ... Infineon Technologies AG (ISIN: DE0006231004, FWB: IFX, NYSE: IFX) was founded in April 1999 when the semiconductor operations of parent company, Siemens AG, were spun off to form a separate legal entity. ... Micron Technology (Micron) NYSE: MU is a multinational company based in Boise, Idaho, USA, best known for producing many forms of semiconductor devices. ... Hynix Semiconductor Inc. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... The Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C., (large image) The Supreme Court of the United States, located in Washington, D.C., is the highest court (see supreme court) in the United States; that is, it has ultimate judicial authority within the United States...

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. XDR DRAM is a high performance RAM Interface like SDR-SDRAM and DDR-SDRAM. The XDR solution was engineered to be effective in small high-bandwidth consumer systems, high-performance main memory applications, and flagship GPUs. ...

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, Stephen J. McGuire, 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. FTC headquarters, Washington, D.C. The Federal Trade Commission (or FTC) is an Independent Agency of the United States Government, established in 1914. ...

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 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 led directly to the guilty pleas.

On August 2, 2006, the Federal Trade Commission overturned McGuire’s ruling, stating that Rambus illegally monopolized the memory industry under section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, and also practiced deception that violated section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act.^[4] is the 214th day of the year (215th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... John Sherman The Sherman Antitrust Act (Sherman Act[1], July 2, 1890, ch. ... The Federal Trade Commission Act of 1934 established the Federal Trade Commission, a bipartisan body of two hundred members appointed by the President of the United States for seven year terms. ...

February 5, 2007, U.S. Federal Trade Commission issued a ruling that limits maximum royalties that Rambus may demand from manufacturers of dynamic random access memory (DRAM), which was set to 0.5% for DDR SDRAM for 3 years from the date the Commission’s Order is issued and then going to 0; while SDRAM's maximum royalty was set to 0.25%. The Commission claimed that halving the DDR SDRAM rate for SDRAM would reflect the fact that while DDR SDRAM utilizes four of the relevant Rambus technologies, SDRAM uses only two. In addition to collecting fees for DRAM chips, Rambus will also be able to receive 0.5% and 1.0% royalties for SDRAM and DDR SDRAM memory controllers or other non-memory chip components respectively. However, the ruling did not prohibit Rambus from collecting royalties on products based on (G)DDR2 SDRAM and other JEDEC post-DDR memory standards. Rambus has appealed the FTC Opinion/Remedy and awaits a court date for the appeal. ^[5] is the 36th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ...

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. The Nintendo 64 ), often abbreviated as N64, is Nintendos third home video game console for the international market. ... The 4MB Expansion Pak The Expansion Pak is a RAM add-on for the Nintendo 64 game console, released in 1998. ...

32MB of RDRAM was used in Sony's PlayStation 2 video game console, and as of 2005, Sony and Rambus have announced ^[6] that the PlayStation 3 will use Rambus's XDR memory and a processor bus interface from Rambus called FlexIO. The PlayStation 3 uses 256 MB of XDRAM running at 3.2GHz. Sony Corporation ) is a Japanese multinational corporation and one of the worlds largest media conglomerates with revenue of $66. ... PS2 redirects here. ... 2005 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The PlayStation 3 , trademarked PLAYSTATION®3,[3] commonly abbreviated PS3) is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment; successor to the PlayStation 2. ... XDR DRAM is a high performance RAM Interface like SDR-SDRAM and DDR-SDRAM. The XDR solution was engineered to be effective in small high-bandwidth consumer systems, high-performance main memory applications, and flagship GPUs. ...

Management team

• Harold Hughes, Chief Executive Officer
• Dr. Mark Horowitz, Chief Scientist
• Satish Rishi, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
• Tom Lavelle, Senior Vice President and General Counsel
• Sharon Holt, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales, Licensing and Marketing
• Kevin Donnelly, Senior Vice President Engineering
• Laura Stark, Senior Vice President Platform Solutions Group
• Martin Scott, Senior Vice President Engineering
• Michael Schroeder, Vice President Human Resources
• Tim Messegee, Vice President Corporate Marketing
• Eric Ries, Vice President and Managing Director, Rambus Japan

Mark Horowitz is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford University. ...

See also

• Intel Corporation

Intel redirects here. ...

References

1. ^ RAMBUS FORM 10-K
2. ^ Toshiba Licenses Rambus XDR Memory and PCI Express Interface Solutions
3. ^ More precisely, “that a license will be made available to applicants desiring to implement the standard either without compensation or under reasonable terms and conditions that are demonstrably free of any unfair discrimination”; §8.2 of the JEDEC Manual of Organization and Procedure (JM21-L), http://www.jedec.org/Home/manuals/JM21L.pdf
4. ^ Rambus Monopolized Computer Memory Industry – FTC.
5. ^ FTC Trims Rambus’ Royalties for DRAM Technologies.
6. ^ [1]

External links

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• Rambus Inc.
• Independent Research Site on Lawsuit Related Issues
• Rambus' Rambling Lawsuits.
• Court of Appeals of the Federal Circuit decision
• FTC Issues Complaint Against Rambus, Inc.
• FTC Chief Administrative Law Judge issues his written ID
• Full FTC Commission Final Decision.
• Rambus' Litigious Path.
• New lawsuits seek to bust Rambus.
• Rambus Faces Fundamental Threat .
• Rambus is back with a brand new lawsuit in hand.
• Rambus files new memory suit.
• Rambus sues four for GDDR 'infringement'.
• Rambus poo-poos Hynix Euro patent victory claim.
• Rambus income slides despite revenue gains.
• Infineon accuses Rambus of 'litigation misconduct.
• Rambus CEO eager to move beyond the courtroom.
• XDR2 to quintuple memory data transfer speeds by 2007
• FTC Finds Rambus Unlawfully Obtained Monopoly Power