Rambus in DRam row

A legal storm is set to rock the DRam market in 2005 as memory maker Rambus sets out to sue key DRam makers for patent infringement.

Rambus, which has a long history of legal wrangles with other DRam manufacturers, has launched suits against Hynix, Infineon, Nanya and Inotera Memories. It claimed their double-data-rate 2 (DDR2) memory devices and GDDR2 and GDDR3 graphics memory devices use its patented inventions. Rambus asserts that the DRam rivals infringe up to 18 of its patents in devices that are currently available. Rambus is already suing Infineon, Hynix, Siemens and Micron for a total of $1bn.

"With analysts projecting a rapid transition this year from DDR to DDR2 and GDDR, and with strong evidence of infringement of our patents already in the public record, we have taken this step today, filing our first new patent case in the US since August 2000," said John Danforth, senior vice-president at Rambus. "Our preference is to resolve these issues through other means. But sometimes we - like other patent holders - must rely on the court system to be fairly compensated for our inventions."

The action comes as DRam market leader Samsung announces it has started mass-producing the high-speed XDR memory device developed using Rambus technology. XDR - or eXtreme Data Rate - can transfer data at a maximum of 8Gbps, which is roughly 10 times faster than today's DDR 400 DRam. Despite the speed, XDR will not become a mainstream PC component because of the dominance of DDR memory. It will be targeted at devices that run high-quality video applications including consoles, workstations, servers and digital TVs.

Mueez Deen, marketing director for graphics memory at Samsung Semiconductor, said: "XDR technology has tremendous potential to become a leading memory solution for today's highestperformance multimedia applications."

The XDR market will grow slowly, starting this year, with global shipments topping 800 million 256Mbit-equivalent units by 2009, according to analyst IDC.

crn@vnu.co.uk