Los Altos (CA) - In a surprising move, Rambus has announced that it will start producing DDR interfaces. While the company claims that this move is a natural expansion of its business, it is an interesting twist that Rambus now intends to sell its interfaces to the companies it has been suing for patent infringements for several years.
In late 2000, Rambus saw a bright future: Intel had selected Rambus DRAM as de-facto memory for its Pentium 4 processor (Willamette). Despite doubt of the high price of RDRAMs and emerging DDR technology, Intel repeatedly emphasized its supported and invested heavily in memory manufacturers who licensed Rambus' technology.
Rambus now believes it can get a share of the growing DDR pie by enhancing existing interface technologies. Rambus' strategy is based on the idea that memory controllers, like those made by Intel and SiS, have a "memory interface" that must talk to DDR DRAMs over a set of bus wires. The physical circuits that electrically connect to and drive the wires and the associated logic is often called the memory interface.
With memory speeds ramping up over the past few years, it's getting harder for logic and circuit designers to meet design requirements and keep pace with newer memory technologies. Rambus believes that it can bring its knowledge, since the company has been signaling at high speeds for several years.
