Micron, Rambus chiefs nearly came to blows

You thought you'd heard it all in the continuing struggle of Micron, Rambus and the Dramurai, didn't you?

But once again, the reality of mempolitiks continues to surprise even the hardened old cynics who make up your merry Register band.

Earlier this week we reported on first Micron, then Hyundai taking legal action against Rambus, so upping the ante on the continuing dispute over patents on double data rate (DDR) and synchronous DRAM memory.

Those legal actions have churned up heady debates on boards such as Silicon Investor and Raging Bull, no doubt prompted by people worried more about whether they're out of pocket than the technology per se.

And the debate has also churned up ancient (March 99) memories of a party held at Dan Niles' San Francisco home, where, according to this piece at The Street, Rambus CFO Gary Harmon and Micron CEO Steve Appleton nearly got into a fist fight over support for the RIMMs.

One telling statement in the piece on The Street is well worth re-airing. Harmon is quoted as saying that by March 2000, Micron would be giving Rambus its whole-hearted support.

Instead, Micron and Hyundai are taking Rambus to court, Intel has conceded that DDR is important for its Pentium 4, while stalinised benchmarks seem to suggest that those long on Rambus may well have been right.

This story has got everything, it seems, apart from sex. Unless, that is, you know differently, and want to slip us the details for our forthcoming book, tentatively called The Rambus Affair™ ®

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