Oki becomes latest to pay royalties to Rambus for SDRAMs, DDR, controllers

Oki becomes latest to pay royalties to Rambus for SDRAMs, DDR, controllers
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- As part of a recent campaign to enforce patents in all types of high-speed memory systems, Rambus Inc. here today announced a new licensing agreement with Japan's Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd. covering synchronous DRAMs, double data rate (DDR) memories, and controllers interfacing to those chips.

The agreement--dealing with memory chips and interfaces outside of Rambus' own Direct Rambus DRAM architecture--is the third licensing pact announced by the company with Japanese chip makers since mid-June. After striking pacts with Hitachi Ltd. and Toshiba Corp., Rambus officials vowed to pursue royalties payments for its patents in all types of fast DRAMs and controllers (see June 23 story).

"Rambus develops and licenses IP intellectual property -- our objective is to produce innovations that will benefit the semiconductor and systems industries, and by licensing these innovations to generate a return on investment to our shareholders," said Geoff Tate, chief executive officer of Rambus. "We believe our Rambus solution is the best for the majority of the market. Developing, marketing and implementing Rambus memory has been and remains our top priority. But we are willing to license our IP for other memory solutions as well," he added, while announcing the new pact with Oki.

Like the agreements with Hitachi and Toshiba, royalty rates for DDR SDRAMs and DDR controllers are greater than what Oki is paying for Rambus DRAM-compatible devices under the new licensing agreement. Rambus said the Oki agreement also includes royalties for SDRAMs and logic that controls those memories, as well as a license fee for the entire pact.

Rambus has been attempting to establish its Direct Rambus DRAM format as the leading next-generation memory for personal computers. It still faces stiff competition from today's mainstream high-speed SDRAMs as well as DDR memories, which have been gaining momentum despite Intel Corp.'s stance favoring Rambus chips. Even Intel now is considering DDR support for its Pentium 4 microprocessor to protect its PC central processor business (see July 27 story).

Oki believes Rambus patents are "necessary for current and future memory and logic products," said Masayoshi Ino, managing director of the Japanese company. Oki is a $5.6 billion conglomerate with over $1 billion in semiconductor sales. Its DRAM sales were estimated at $450 million in 1999 by a report ranking semiconductor suppliers from CMP Media Inc., the publisher of SBN.