Hypertransport group gains TI, IBM

On Wed, 20 Aug 2003 19:52:27 GMT, Tony Hill wrote:

On 19 Aug 2003 15:29:32 -0700, (Tim
Sullivan) wrote:
(George Macdonald) wrote in message ...
On Mon, 18 Aug 2003 04:11:12 GMT, Robert Myers wrote:
The big difference here is that Intel is a bona fide manufacturer. They
cannot possibly own all the IP required to design and make all their chips.
The hardware industry has forged ahead as quickly as it has, in large part
due to broad cross-licensing agreements - the hardware mfrs have a strong
interest in continuing this... including Intel... though Intel and others
in strong positions, occasionally have their little excursions into
architecture "proprietarization".

Do you think the memory industry would have forged ahead as quickly in
the last few years if Rambus did not exist? Isn't it good to have
innovation and competition instead of cartels controlling the pace of
change?

If it hadn't been for Rambus (or more to the point, Intel's claim that
they would exclusively support DRDRAM), the memory industry would have
forged ahead with it's SLDRAM plans and we would all be using that.
Instead they abandoned those plans and started working on RDRAM, until
they realized that it wasn't all it was cracked up to be technically
and Rambus was such a dirty and litigious company that no one wanted
to deal with. Instead they had to backtrack to their fall-back plan
of DDR and now DDR2.

So, to answer the question, yes I think that the memory industry would
have forged ahead just as quickly if not more so if Rambus did not
exist. It's not like Rambus is the only company developing new memory
technology. In fact, they aren't even all that big of a player in the
R&D front. Their technology focuses exclusively on one piece of the
memory puzzle.

The trouble with the IP companies, like Rambus, is that they are not in the
patent trading business. Of course if the Intel/Rambus/DRDRAM saga had
played out as they planned, Intel, through Rambus warrants, would have
owned by proxy, the memory interface... but would not have been in a
position to "trade" it. Maybe it was all partly Intel's fault but Rambus
is easy to hate for the above reasons - parasites are just fugly.

A parasite takes resources and gives nothing in return. Has not Rambus
made any contributions to advances in memory technology?

One could certainly argue that they haven't really, or at least not
for PC memory technology. The small bit of technology that they did
bring to market has been of some use for certain embedded markets,
though even there other solutions do exist.

Not only embedded markets - they sucked in the folks who designed Marvel ;-)

Paul Tiseo wrote in message ...
In article ,
says...

Do you think the memory industry would have forged ahead as quickly in
the last few years if Rambus did not exist? Isn't it good to have
innovation and competition instead of cartels controlling the pace of
change?

Considering they stole their presumed "innovation" from JEDEC
meetings and from prior art?


What did they steal? The original patent that describes all Rambus'
inventions was filed in 1990, well before Rambus joined JEDEC. It
looks more like JEDEC borrowed ideas from Rambus, made slight changes
and called the technology their own. As for prior art you may be
right, however the USPTO who had an examiner doing a full time job of
researching prior art found none. Also courts in Europe have
researched prior art and have found none.

I will admit, it is appealing to consider they might have been an
impetus to other memory technologies to get to market faster, possibly.
This point could be debated. One could argue that changes in memory
technology would have happened anyways due to the growing gap between
CPU performance and memory subsystem performance. Rambus was one such
change...others were brewing in parallel, if not beforehand.

A parasite takes resources and gives nothing in return. Has not Rambus
made any contributions to advances in memory technology?

Where? Patenting double-clocking? Patenting voltage levels?

Right...


Rambus didn't patent the technologies you mention, but the application
of the technologies in memory systems. Using known technology(eg
double-clocking) to solve a new problem or in a novel way(eg on a
memory chip) is patentable.
Maybe you say they are obvious but most solutions to hard problem are
obvious once someone describes the solution to you.
You must hate Rambus alot if you think that they have no advances in
memory technology.

----------------------------------------
Paul Tiseo, Systems Programmer
Research Computing Facility, Mayo Clinic

(please remove numbers to email me)

In article ,
says...
On Mon, 18 Aug 2003 23:01:13 GMT, "Yousuf Khan"
wrote:

snip

Let's face it Intel started out as a nice guy when it was starting out too.
Weren't we all glad when good-guys Intel and Microsoft took away the
decision making power of the PC industry from big-bad meanie IBM, back in
the late 80's/early 90's? You actually wanted to do business with Intel at
that time.


And now it's IBM to the defense of Linux against former Linux
distributor SCO.

Not hardware-related, but I met a really nice person from M$ with some
degree of responsibility at a high-profile event recently. I told the
M$ staffer that I wouldn't even consider using an M$ product for the
topic of the conference, and the M$ rep asked for my business card.

Soon I got a really nice e-mail from the M$ staffer asking if I would
share my concerns in more detail. I sent back a polite but blunt
e-mail: would M$ please act as if it were a member of a community
rather than the proprietor of it, and would M$ please stop trying to
obstruct peaceful interaction with Linux by sharing details of NT f1147
format and SMB so that both could be used properly by Linux networking
tools. I also said that, as soon as M$ file formats were open and did
not compromise the rights of owners of intellectual property, I would
stop advising people not to store intellectual property in M$ formats.

I got no reply.

Do you think you would have gotten a reply from RMBS or INTC
management with such a pointed question? I don't think anyone
here is saying that M$FT is a saint. The issue is RMBS and their
patent shenanigans. Come on" DDR data recovery by inverting a
clock? Programmable latency registers? Please!

Frankly, I can't understand anyone (other than the usual shills)
supporting RMBS' actions. The USPTO has problems, but RMBS makes
them stand out like a big toe laced with gout!

--
Keith

In article ,
says...
On Wed, 20 Aug 2003 19:52:27 GMT, Tony Hill wrote:

On 19 Aug 2003 15:29:32 -0700, (Tim
Sullivan) wrote:
(George Macdonald) wrote in message ...
On Mon, 18 Aug 2003 04:11:12 GMT, Robert Myers wrote:
The big difference here is that Intel is a bona fide manufacturer. They
cannot possibly own all the IP required to design and make all their chips.
The hardware industry has forged ahead as quickly as it has, in large part
due to broad cross-licensing agreements - the hardware mfrs have a strong
interest in continuing this... including Intel... though Intel and others
in strong positions, occasionally have their little excursions into
architecture "proprietarization".

Do you think the memory industry would have forged ahead as quickly in
the last few years if Rambus did not exist? Isn't it good to have
innovation and competition instead of cartels controlling the pace of
change?

If it hadn't been for Rambus (or more to the point, Intel's claim that
they would exclusively support DRDRAM), the memory industry would have
forged ahead with it's SLDRAM plans and we would all be using that.
Instead they abandoned those plans and started working on RDRAM, until
they realized that it wasn't all it was cracked up to be technically
and Rambus was such a dirty and litigious company that no one wanted
to deal with. Instead they had to backtrack to their fall-back plan
of DDR and now DDR2.

So, to answer the question, yes I think that the memory industry would
have forged ahead just as quickly if not more so if Rambus did not
exist. It's not like Rambus is the only company developing new memory
technology. In fact, they aren't even all that big of a player in the
R&D front. Their technology focuses exclusively on one piece of the
memory puzzle.

The trouble with the IP companies, like Rambus, is that they are not in the
patent trading business. Of course if the Intel/Rambus/DRDRAM saga had
played out as they planned, Intel, through Rambus warrants, would have
owned by proxy, the memory interface... but would not have been in a
position to "trade" it. Maybe it was all partly Intel's fault but Rambus
is easy to hate for the above reasons - parasites are just fugly.

A parasite takes resources and gives nothing in return. Has n[
made any contributions to advances in memory technology?

One could certainly argue that they haven't really, or at least not
for PC memory technology. The small bit of technology that they did
bring to market has been of some use for certain embedded markets,
though even there other solutions do exist.

Not only embedded markets - they sucked in the folks who designed Marvel ;-)

Judging by the recent RMBS price, they've suckered in a whole new
generation of shills. ...though I think RMBS may be having some
competition with SCO, on this front.

--
Keith

On Wed, 20 Aug 2003 19:50:47 GMT, daytripper
wrote:
On Wed, 20 Aug 2003 19:52:27 GMT, Tony Hill wrote:
One could certainly argue that they haven't really, or at least not
for PC memory technology. The small bit of technology that they did
bring to market has been of some use for certain embedded markets,
though even there other solutions do exist.

Not only embedded markets - they sucked in the folks who designed Marvel ;-)

What's perhaps even more amazing though is that HP is actually
SHIPPING those systems now!

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca

On Thu, 21 Aug 2003 02:45:58 GMT, Tony Hill wrote:

On Wed, 20 Aug 2003 19:50:47 GMT, daytripper
wrote:
On Wed, 20 Aug 2003 19:52:27 GMT, Tony Hill wrote:
One could certainly argue that they haven't really, or at least not
for PC memory technology. The small bit of technology that they did
bring to market has been of some use for certain embedded markets,
though even there other solutions do exist.

Not only embedded markets - they sucked in the folks who designed Marvel ;-)

What's perhaps even more amazing though is that HP is actually
SHIPPING those systems now!

It is amazing considering the last couple of years had to be hell for the
walking dead that were involved.

In any case, I believe the current owners of the Alpha legacy - like the
owners before - were contractually obligated to ship some number of Marvel
systems, lest the humongous penalties be invoked.

They'll likely never recoup the development costs, but rendering those
penalties moot will save a huge pot of HP bucks...

Robert Myers wrote:
::
snip
: The same cannot be said for the thugs in the software business. Make
: no mistake about it, some of the major players are acting like thugs,
: and they are not confining their thuggery to players in the business.
: Ask anyone who has been audited by the Software Business Alliance or
: who has been contacted by SCO. In another post you patronizingly tell

Funny how you should say that. Read this interesting clip:
http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html

Talk about thuggery!

J.
--
--------
The end to "Personal Computing" as we know it is just around the corner.
TCPA will take away ALL rights from you, the consumer. Learn more
about it he http://www.againsttcpa.com/what-is-tcpa.html and
he http://www.againsttcpa.com/tcpa-faq-en.html

I did, enough to vote with my $$s. I would NOT and did NOT buy a P4 until
non-RDRAM options were available. I'm sure I was not and am not alone. I
will NOT buy any product which I have knowledge provides them with any
revenue. Thus speaketh this corner of the market.

DW

"Tim Sullivan" wrote in message
om...
: Paul Tiseo wrote in message
...
: In article ,
: says...
:
: Do you think the memory industry would have forged ahead as quickly in
: the last few years if Rambus did not exist? Isn't it good to have
: innovation and competition instead of cartels controlling the pace of
: change?
:
: Considering they stole their presumed "innovation" from JEDEC
: meetings and from prior art?
:
:
: What did they steal? The original patent that describes all Rambus'
: inventions was filed in 1990, well before Rambus joined JEDEC. It
: looks more like JEDEC borrowed ideas from Rambus, made slight changes
: and called the technology their own. As for prior art you may be
: right, however the USPTO who had an examiner doing a full time job of
: researching prior art found none. Also courts in Europe have
: researched prior art and have found none.
:
: I will admit, it is appealing to consider they might have been an
: impetus to other memory technologies to get to market faster, possibly.
: This point could be debated. One could argue that changes in memory
: technology would have happened anyways due to the growing gap between
: CPU performance and memory subsystem performance. Rambus was one such
: change...others were brewing in parallel, if not beforehand.
:
: A parasite takes resources and gives nothing in return. Has not Rambus
: made any contributions to advances in memory technology?
:
: Where? Patenting double-clocking? Patenting voltage levels?
:
: Right...
:
:
: Rambus didn't patent the technologies you mention, but the application
: of the technologies in memory systems. Using known technology(eg
: double-clocking) to solve a new problem or in a novel way(eg on a
: memory chip) is patentable.
: Maybe you say they are obvious but most solutions to hard problem are
: obvious once someone describes the solution to you.
: You must hate Rambus alot if you think that they have no advances in
: memory technology.
:
: ----------------------------------------
: Paul Tiseo, Systems Programmer
: Research Computing Facility, Mayo Clinic
:
: (please remove numbers to email me)

"Tim Sullivan" wrote in message
om...

What did they steal? The original patent that describes all Rambus'
inventions was filed in 1990, well before Rambus joined JEDEC. It
looks more like JEDEC borrowed ideas from Rambus, made slight changes
and called the technology their own.

There is strong evidence that Rambus deliberately and fraudulently
manipulated JEDEC so that their standards would infringe on Rambus' patents.

DS

On Mon, 18 Aug 2003 23:26:28 -0400, Robert Myers
wrote:

I sent back a polite but blunt
e-mail: would M$ please act as if it were a member of a community
rather than the proprietor of it

Ha! The evil businessman cares NOTHING for you. He only wants to
line his greedy pockets. End of story.