Won't these guys ever quit?

Once again, Rambus has filed suit against the other memory manufacturers, this time they're crying, "Collusion!"

I just wish this company would go away. In case you're not familiar with Rambus, they are the company who produced RDRAM, the memory technology that was supposed to be the new standard a few years back. Intel jumped on board and announced that RDRAM would be the only memory supported for the Pentium IV processor. The trouble was, there were major production problems with it, causing prices to be ridiculously high. While Rambus was busy sorting our their problems, the other memory manufacturers got together and developed another standard, which proved to be just as fast (or faster) and was significantly cheaper. In order to keep up with the competition, Intel was forced to add DDR SDRAM support to the P4 platform.

Rambus didn't like this one bit, and immediately filed lawsuits against the other major memory manufacturers. It seems that while standards were being developed, Rambus quietly filed patents on the technology being presented as an open standard by the other manufacturers. Once the new DDR SDRAM hit the market, Rambus tried to sue the other manufacturers for licensing fees on the technology they had patented. They lost, but have never stopped trying to be a thorn in the side of end users (who will ultimately suffer if Rambus prevails, as they will artificially drive the cost of memory through the roof).

Intel has since officially dropped support of RDRAM altogether. But Rambus refuses to go away. This latest lawsuit is an example of their inability to admit defeat.

If they spent as much effort developing new technology as they have filing lawsuits, perhaps Rambus would have gained a bigger market share by now. Instead, they refuse to play nice with the other manufacturers, insisting they can reinvent the wheel instead of participating in the development of future standards which would bring new technology to consumers at a reasonable price.

Let's hope that the FTC will put a stop to their litigious practices soon before the days of the sub-$1,000 computers cease to be reality.

Posted by geekchik at May 5, 2004 08:47 PM