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Rambus Inc. is an American technology company that Product design, develops and licenses chip interface technologies and architectures that are used in digital electronics products. The company, founded in 1990, is well known for inventing RDRAM and for its intellectual property-based litigation following the introduction of DDR-SDRAM memory. United States Patent Office - RDRAM, Rambus Inc
Rambus was incorporated and founded as California company in 1990 and then re-incorporated in the state of Delaware before the company went public in 1997 on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the Ticker symbol RMBS.
In the 1990s, Rambus was a high-speed interface technology development and marketing company that invented 600 MHz interface technology, which solved memory bottleneck issues faced by system designers. Rambus's technology was based on a very high speed, chip-to-chip interface that was incorporated on dynamic random-access-memory (DRAM) components, processors and controllers, which achieved performance rates over ten times faster than conventional DRAMs. Rambus's RDRAM transferred data at 600 MHz over a narrow byte-wide Rambus Channel to Rambus-compatible Integrated Circuits (ICs).
Rambus's interface was an open standard, accessible to all semiconductor companies, such as Intel. Rambus provided companies who licensed its technology a full range of and engineering services. Rambus's interface technology was broadly licensed to leading DRAM, ASIC and PC peripheral chipset suppliers in the 1990s. Licensees of Rambus's RDRAM technology included companies such as Creative Labs, Intel, Microsoft, Nintendo, Silicon Graphics, Hitachi, Hyundai Group, IBM, Molex, Macronix and NEC.
Rambus RDRAM technology was integrated into products such as Nintendo 64, Intel's system memory chipsets for PCs, Creative Labs Graphics Blaster 3D for PCs, workstations manufactured by Silicon Graphics and Microsoft's prototype Talisman 3D graphics chip set.
In 2003, Rambus Incorporated announced that Toshiba and Elpida Memory Inc. will produce its new memory technology, known as XDR DRAM. The memory technology is capable of running at 3.2 GHz and is said to be faster than any memory technology available in consumer entertainment devices and PCs at the time.
Rambus purchased Cryptography Research on June 6, 2011, for $342.5M. This will enable Rambus Inc. to develop its semiconductor licensing portfolio to include CRI's content protection and security. According to Rambus CEO Harold Hughes, the CRI security technologies would be applied to a variety of products in the company's IP portfolio.
Rambus derives the majority of its annual revenue by licensing its technologies and patents for chip interfaces to its customers. According to The Wall Street Journal, history of Rambus has been "marked by litigation, including patent battles with numerous chip makers". Rambus, Nvidia Settle Patent Dispute
In 2015, Rambus acquired Integrion Microelectronics, a small Toronto based IP provider of high-speed analog SerDes PHY for an undisclosed amount. Through this acquisition, Rambus opened its fist Canadian office and boosted its high-speed serdes IP portfolio offering.
On August 17, 2015, Rambus announced the new R+ DDR4 server memory chips RB26 DDR4 RDIMM and RB26 DDR4 LRDIMM. The chipset includes a DDR4 Register Clock Driver and Data buffer, and it's fully-compliant with the JEDEC DDR4.
In 2016, Rambus acquired Semtech Corp Snowbush IP for US$32.5 million. Snowbush IP provides analog and mixed-signal IP technologies, and will expand Rambus' product offerings.
In 2016, Rambus acquired Inphi Memory Interconnect Business, for US$90 million. The acquisition includes all assets of the Inphi Memory Interconnect Business, such as customer contracts, product inventory, supply chain agreements, and intellectual property.
On November 2, 2017, Rambus announced partnership with Interac Association and Samsung Canada to assist in enabling Samsung Pay in Canada.
In 2018, Rambus agreed to renew a patent license with Nvidia. Rambus would be sharing its patent portfolio, including those covering and memory controllers, with Nvidia.
On December 11, 2019, Rambus HBM2 PHY and Memory Controller IP were announced to be used in Inflame Technology's AI training chip.
In 2019, Rambus announced that it will move headquarters from Sunnyvale, California to North San Jose, California.
In 2021, Rambus announced that it started an expedited share buyback program with Deutsche Bank to buy up roughly $100 million in common stock. Rambus also acquired two companies, AnalogX and PLDA, which specialize in physical links for PCI Express and CXL protocols.
In May 2022, it was announced Rambus had acquired the Montreal-headquartered electronic design company, Hardent.
In July 2023, Rambus sold its SerDes and memory interface PHY IP business to Cadence Design Systems for $110 million. In September 2023, it was announced the acquisition had been completed.
Disadvantages of RDRAM technology include significantly increased latency, power dissipation as heat, manufacturing complexity, and cost. PC800 RDRAM operated with a minimum latency of 45 ns, compared to 15 ns for PC133 SDRAM. RDRAMs can also be told to increase their latencies in order to prevent the possibility of two or more chips transmitting at the same time and causing a collision. However, SDRAM latency depends on the current state of memory so its latency can vary widely depending on what happened earlier and the strategy used by the SDRAM controller, while RDRAM latency is constant once it has been established by the memory controller. RDRAM memory chips also put out significantly more heat than SDRAM chips, necessitating on all RIMM devices.
Rambus also developed and licensed its XDR DRAM technology, notably used in the PlayStation 3, and more recently XDR2 DRAM. Rambus XDR DRAM Surpasses 100 Million Units Shipped
In January 2005, Rambus filed four more lawsuits against memory chip makers SK Hynix, Nanya Technology, Inotera Memories and Infineon Technology claiming that DDR2, GDDR2 and GDDR3 chips contain Rambus technology. In March 2005, when Rambus was accused of shredding key documents prior to court hearings, the judge agreed and dismissed Rambus's case against Infineon. This led Rambus to negotiate a settlement with Infineon, which agreed to pay Rambus quarterly license fees of $5.9 million and in return, both companies ceased all litigation against each other. The agreement ran from November 2005 to November 2007. After this date, if Rambus had enough remaining agreements in place, Infineon could make extra payments up to $100 million. In June 2005, Rambus also sued one of its strongest proponents, Samsung, the world's largest memory manufacturer, and terminated Samsung's license. Samsung had promoted Rambus's RDRAM and currently remains a licensee of Rambus's XDR DRAM memory.
In February 2006, Micron Technology sued Rambus, alleging that Rambus had violated RICO and deliberately harmed Micron.
On April 29, 2008, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a ruling vacating the order of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, saying the case with Samsung should be dismissed, saying Judge Robert E. Payne's findings critical of Rambus, were on a case that had already been settled, and thus had no legal standing.
On January 9, 2009, a Delaware federal judge ruled that Rambus could not enforce patents against Micron Technology Inc., stating that Rambus had a "clear and convincing" show of bad faith, and ruled that Rambus' destruction of key related documents (spoliation of evidence) nullified its right to enforce its patents against Micron.
In July 2009, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) rejected 8 claims by Rambus against Nvidia. US Patent Office Rejects 8 Rambus Claims Against Nvidia, The Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2009
On November 24, 2009, the USPTO rejected all 17 claims in three Rambus patents that the company asserted against Nvidia in a complaint filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC). However the ITC announced that out of five patents, Nvidia did violate three of them. Due to this ruling Nvidia faced a potential U.S. import ban on some of its chips used in the nForce, Quadro, GeForce, Tesla, and Tegra series graphics products—nearly every video card type manufactured by Nvidia. Nvidia faces a US import ban, The Inquirer, January 25, 2010
On June 20, 2011, Rambus went to trial against Micron and Hynix in California, seeking as much as $12.9 billion in damages for "a secret and unlawful conspiracy to kill a revolutionary technology, make billions of dollars and hang onto power", Rambus lawyer Bart Williams told jurors. Rambus lost on November 16, 2011, when the San Francisco County Superior Court jury ruled against Rambus in a 9–3 vote, and its shares dropped drastically, from $14.04 to $4.00 per share.
On January 24, 2012, a USPTO appeals board declared the third of three patents known as the "Barth patents" invalid. The first two had been declared invalid in September 2011. Rambus had used these patents to win infringement lawsuits against Nvidia Corp and Hewlett-Packard. However, on June 28, 2013, The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed the USPTO and the '109 Barth patent's validity was reinstated: "In conclusion, the Board's determination that all 25 claims of the '109 Patent are invalid as anticipated by Farmwald is not supported by substantial evidence. Accordingly, this court reverses."
On August 2, 2006, the FTC overturned McGuire's ruling, stating that Rambus illegally monopolized the memory industry under section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, and also practiced deception that violated section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act.
February 5, 2007, the FTC issued a ruling that limits maximum royalties that Rambus may demand from manufacturers of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), which was set to 0.5% for DDR SDRAM for 3 years from the date the commission's Order is issued and then going to 0; while SDRAM's maximum royalty was set to 0.25%. The Commission claimed that halving the DDR SDRAM rate for SDRAM would reflect the fact that while DDR SDRAM utilizes four of the relevant Rambus technologies, SDRAM uses only two. In addition to collecting fees for DRAM chips, Rambus will also be able to receive 0.5% and 1.0% royalties for SDRAM and DDR SDRAM memory controllers or other non-memory chip components respectively. However, the ruling did not prohibit Rambus from collecting royalties on products based on DDR2 SDRAM, GDDR2, and other JEDEC post-DDR memory standards. Rambus has appealed the FTC Opinion/Remedy and awaits a court date for the appeal.
On March 26, 2008, the jury of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California determined that had Rambus acted properly while a member of the standard-setting organization JEDEC during its participating in the early 1990s, finding that the memory manufacturers did not meet their burden of proving antitrust and fraud claims.
On April 22, 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit overturned the FTC reversal of McGuire's 2006 ruling, saying that the FTC had not established that Rambus had harmed the competition.
On February 23, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the bids by the FTC to impose royalty sanctions on Rambus via antitrust penalties.
In March 2014, Rambus and Nanya signed a 5-year patent licensing agreement, settling earlier claims.
Rambus said these deals were part of a change in strategy to a less litigious, more collaborative approach, distancing themselves from accusations of . Ronald Black, Rambus's CEO, said, "Somehow we got thrown into the patent troll bunch ... This is just not the case."
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