Rambus Inc says it is in a holding position as it waits for the release of Intel Corp’s 820 chipset – the first to support the company’s high speed DRAM interconnect technology. The Mountain View, California-based company made third quarter revenues of $10.6m, up 16% on $9.2m revenues for the same period last year. Net earnings were $0.08, beating First Call estimates by two cents.
Rambus CFO Gary Harmon described his company’s performance for the quarter as pretty much on track. The company makes its revenues through licensing fees and royalities, signing on VLSI Technology Inc and PixelFusion Inc to use its technology last quarter. Harmon claims that the company has got all of the major DRAM players wrapped up but expects to add some logic licensees in the fourth quarter.
Harmon says that the company is now in a quiet phase waiting for Intel to release its 820 chipset, which is now due out in September. Harmon says that this will be the second major phase for the Rambus technology. The first was adoption of Rambus by Nintendo for its N64 console. However, Harmon naturally says he expects the Intel deal to be much bigger. He is bullish about Rambus’ chances of success against PC266 and the other memory standards that have been emerging. Initially, Intel will be targeting the high performance end of the market. However, as Rambus achieves volume production, and chip prices come down. Harmon expects to start cutting into the PC266 market share. The company expects to see the first revenues from the 820 chipset in the first quarter of 2000. This wait for royalties is what Harmon describes as the only downside of Rambus’ licensing model…we don’t control our own destiny but are dependent on others.
