3 ms·

Is Rambus still a thing? I remember their vendor lockin RAM memory from Pentium 4 era. Later there were some bad PR and lawsuits, and the PC world moved on. htt

by frik 9y ago

Is Rambus still a thing? I remember their vendor lockin RAM memory from Pentium 4 era. Later there were some bad PR and lawsuits, and the PC world moved on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambus

jandrese 9y ago
My impression is that they were mostly killed by the higher price point for RAMBUS RAM. Performance wasn't improved enough to justify the price premium, and was worse in some cases (random access patterns).
dheera 9y ago
Also, I think people came to the realization that for most consumer use cases, if due to cost considerations you have to choose between more RAM or faster RAM, choose more RAM. Any swapping to disk will kill the speed advantages of faster RAM.
djsumdog 9y ago
Wow, I didn't know about the patent trolling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambus#Patent_Lawsuits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambus#Patent_Lawsuits I just remembered the Intel/Rambus boards that all had to be recalled because of Rambus issues (IIRC, the issue wasn't with the ram, but actually the boards themselves. Many of the boards were given to employees who took the ram and chucked the boards).
- foobiekr 9y ago
  are you sure you aren't thinking of the dicing issues that caused chips to have eventual failure (used in some network products)?
- yuhong 9y ago
  Yea, I think you are probably referring to how i820 RDRAM boards had to be limited to two slots. This kind of signal integrity issues is not limited to RDRAM.
kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
I'll never select a Rambus product on any parts BOM I have influence over. Other engineers should do the same. Companies like them should be given the capitalism death penalty.
- yuhong 9y ago
  They now have bought Inphi's memory buffer business I think. Of course, this is long after they give up on even XDR DRAM.
baby 9y ago
They bought Cryptography Research which is one of the most awesome crypto company out there (Paul Kocher, Mike Hamburg, ... I'm sure I'm missing others)

by frik 9y ago

jandrese 9y ago

My impression is that they were mostly killed by the higher price point for RAMBUS RAM. Performance wasn't improved enough to justify the price premium, and was worse in some cases (random access patterns).

dheera 9y ago

Also, I think people came to the realization that for most consumer use cases, if due to cost considerations you have to choose between more RAM or faster RAM, choose more RAM. Any swapping to disk will kill the speed advantages of faster RAM.

djsumdog 9y ago

Wow, I didn't know about the patent trolling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambus#Patent_Lawsuits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambus#Patent_Lawsuits I just remembered the Intel/Rambus boards that all had to be recalled because of Rambus issues (IIRC, the issue wasn't with the ram, but actually the boards themselves. Many of the boards were given to employees who took the ram and chucked the boards).

foobiekr 9y ago
are you sure you aren't thinking of the dicing issues that caused chips to have eventual failure (used in some network products)?
yuhong 9y ago
Yea, I think you are probably referring to how i820 RDRAM boards had to be limited to two slots. This kind of signal integrity issues is not limited to RDRAM.

kevin_thibedeau 9y ago

I'll never select a Rambus product on any parts BOM I have influence over. Other engineers should do the same. Companies like them should be given the capitalism death penalty.

yuhong 9y ago
They now have bought Inphi's memory buffer business I think. Of course, this is long after they give up on even XDR DRAM.

baby 9y ago

They bought Cryptography Research which is one of the most awesome crypto company out there (Paul Kocher, Mike Hamburg, ... I'm sure I'm missing others)