Rambus, the memory interface specialist, was dealt the most fantastic cards, but appears to have had little clue about how to play them.
First: it had fantastic technology - the industry's fastest interface between memory and microprocessor - just when memory-microprocessor data exchange was beginning to become a bottleneck.
Second: it was endorsed by Intel who, for a while, put Rambus interfaces on its microprocessors.
How could a company with those two advantages fail to succeed massively?
Last week the company laid off a fifth of its workforce against the background of a legal bill which is now running at between $12 million and $16 million a quarter. The present round of lay-offs is expected to save $17 million a year. Rambus' revenues last quarter were $35.7 million.
The schedule of Rambus' legal battles is awesome:
Rambus has legal cases running against Hynix, Samsung and Micron
Last month, Rambus initiated a lawsuit against Nvidia for allegedly infringing Rambus DDR memory controller patents.
Samsung has asked the US Patent Office to re-examine some of Rambus' patent claims, and Hynix has asked the
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has asked for a review of a judgment favourable to Rambus in its action against Hynix which was made by the US Court of Appeals for the
Additionally, Rambus may also be preparing to start legal actions against manufacturers of synchronous flash memory.
And Rambus is being investigated by the EC for anti-trust violations in
Successful licensing is a delicate business requiring agreement between licensor and licensee. ARM is the leading independent IP licensor and manages to be so without suing its potential customers, whereas Rambus seems to have sued most of its potential customers in the DRAM industry.
Isn't it about time that Rambus wondered: 'Am I going about things in the right way?'
Subscribe to this blog's feed