Rambus, the pugnacious owner of all sorts of fast memory patents, many obtained legitimately, has turned in a profit for the December quarter, its Q3.
So it was down - $6.2m, compared with $13m for the same period last year, and $6.5m in Q2, but still it"s a profit. Revenues were $24.9m, 28 per cent down on Q3, 2000 and 11 per cent on the previous quarter. The chip designer Royalties were $21.8 million, 13 per cent down on the previous quarter.
The company blames this mostly on DRAM price erosion during the period - and sure enough, Rambus RDRAM modules don"t look so very expensive right now, up against the historically much cheaper DDR-DRAM fast memory competition (supplies for the latter have been a little tight recently).
But what impact have DDR chipsets, launched by SiS, VIA and Intel in recent months had on Rambus"s business? The consensus is that it don"t look too good for Rambus on the desktop, but that it should hold its own in the server market. We guess it will probably take a quarter, may be two, before the effect on Rambus" market share becomes clear.