What do Micron, Samsung and Rambus have in common?

Rambus shares rose sharply at the beginning of the week after Micron said it was ready to provide samples for the memory technology. Over the last month, Rambus shares have seesawed between $75 and around $90. When we checked for the purposes of this piece, its share price was $84.75. Last year, Intel invested half a billion dollars in Rambus, and before then, Micron had been reluctant to promote the technology. Earlier this year, Intel pumped $100 million into Korean memory manufacturer Samsung, with the proviso that it develop Direct Rambus, bigtime. (Story: Intel to pour $100 million into Samsung). Many DRAM manufacturers are livid with Rambus (and with Intel) because they have to pay the company a licence fee to manufacture the memory modules. Intel is also a big investor in Samsung, which promotes Direct Rambus heavily, and, of course, in Rambus itself. This is all a big coincidence. There is, of course, no connection between Intel's investment in these companies, and its public stance that PC-133 is not its cup of tea. Close to a billion dollar investment in RDRAM is, of course, not chickenfeed even for Intel, and might make anyone in their right mind think twice about switching to PC-133. ®