Rambus Ink has brilliant future

Yeah, OK, we know we've had our fun with Rambus Ink and Intel, but, please believe us, this company has a seriously good future and is also seriously undervalued. However, the success that Rambus will rake in is not necessarily pegged to the Great Satan of Chips. Those who have followed Rambus throughout the year will remember that at one point its share price stood at an awesome $117½, and then crashed down to just over $60 in the wake of certain announcements that Intel made. It's been a bit of a Big Dipper ride. Yesterday, its share price closed at $71¾ on Wall Street, and we can't help thinking that this makes it a good buy, in the medium to long term. The reason is nothing to do with the x.86 architecture, despite somewhat wild predictions by Intel that Rambus memory would sit in around 50 per cent of PCs by the end of next year. It's far more to do with the introduction of PlayStation II, which is likely to challenge Intel bigtime, when it appears and which also uses Rambus memory. Presumably, PlayStation mobos work fine with the fast technology. As for the quantity of RIMMs appearing right now, we note that Samsung is now saying that it will manufacture one million parts in January next year, and double that figure in February. As one (unnamed) wry observer at a major memory manufacturer told us this morning, it has to spend some of the money that Intel pumped into it. He also noted that the EE Times headline which said Samsung to double Rambus production was a little mathematically unsound. Double nothing is still nothing, he said... ®