Price of Rambus RIMMs drops shock

Kingston Technology, purveyor of memory modules, said today that it has dropped the price of some of its Rambus RIMMs by as much as 68 per cent. The average amount of the drop is 35 per cent, Kingston said, and a representative from the firm said that the reason was greater availability and shorter lead times for RIMMs. This will be great news for those who wish to use Rambus memory on their 820 motherboards but will be bad news for people who have just bought RIMMs before the price dropped by 68 per cent. A representative claimed that system OEMs, including Dell, Compaq, IBM and HP, are introducing "many new products" which support Rambus memory. Late last year, one of the co-chairmen of Kingston said yields of Rambus RIMMs were low. But in February, at the Intel Developer Forum, Rambus employees claimed they were doing everything possible -- short of scrapping their royalty fees from sales of the memory -- to reduce prices. ®