Still Rambus, but less rambunctious

Junko Yoshida, EE Times
(03/29/2010 6:42 PM EDT)

NEW YORK — After celebrating its 20th birthday last week (March 22nd) by ringing the NASDAQ stock market opening bell, Rambus Inc. held an analyst meeting here -- something the company hasn't done for a while, seeking to cast a kinder and gentler light on the company's feisty reputation.

Heretofore, Rambus has been largely known as a litigious (and pesky to some) memory technology company -- unafraid to go after the world's leading memory chip vendors. The company has charged its competitors not just for patent infringements but for forming a cartel that fixed memory chip prices.

That tenacity, however, has cost Rambus. The company has been practically ostracized by most of the big players in the global memory industry. Despite its innovations, getting shunned by the industry has made Rambus' memory chip technology more expensive and unattractive to potential customers.

Some argue that Rambus may no longer matter very much to the rest of the memory industry. Brian Matas, vice president of market research at IC Insights, said, "Not as much as it once did. The [global memory] industry has sort of progressed without Rambus." The fact that Rambus' technologies have been in court so often hasn't helped, either.

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