History of RDRAM marketing in PC market

In November, 1996, Rambus entered into a development and license contract with Intel.[3]. Intel announced to the Wintel development community that it would only support the Rambus memory interface for its microprocessors,[4] Intel was granted rights to purchase 1M shares of Rambus' stock at $10 per share.[5]

In 1998, Intel planned to make a $500 million equity investment in Micron Technology, to accelerate the adoption of Direct RDRAM.[6] Other investment included paying $100 million to Samsung Electronics in 1999.[7]

As a transition strategy, Intel planned to support PC-100 SDRAM DIMM on future Intel 82x chipset using Memory Translation Hub (MTH).[8] In 2000, Intel recalled the Intel 820 motherboard with memory translator hub (MTH) because the MTH can, while doing simultaneous switching, produce noise that may cause the computer to hang mysteriously or to spontaneously reboot.[9] Since then, no production Intel 820 motherboards contain MTH.

In 2000, Intel subsidized RDRAM by bundling retail boxes of Pentium 4 CPU with 2 RIMMs.[10] Intel began to phase out Rambus subsidies in 2001.[11]

In 2003, Intel introduced Intel 865 and Intel 875 chipsets, which were marketed as high end replacement of Intel 850. Furthermore, the future memory roadmap did not include Rambus.[12]

Few DRAM manufacturers have ever obtained the license to produce RDRAM, and those who did license the technology failed to make enough RIMMs to satisfy PC market demand, causing RIMM to be priced higher than SDRAM DIMMs, even when memory prices skyrocketed during 2002.[13] During RDRAM's decline, DDR continued to advance in performance while, at the same time, it was still cheaper than RDRAM. Meanwhile, a massive price war in the DDR SDRAM allowed DDR SDRAM to be sold at or below production cost. DDR SDRAM makers were losing massive amounts of money, while RDRAM suppliers were making a good profit for every module sold. While it is still produced today, few motherboards support RDRAM. Between 2002-2005, market share of RDRAM had never extended beyond 5%.[14]

In 2004, it was revealed that SDRAM manufacturers Infineon, Hynix, Samsung, Micron, and Elpida had entered into a price-fixing scheme .[15] Infineon, Hynix, Samsung and Elpida all entered plea agreements with the US DOJ, pleading guilty to price fixing over 1999-2002.[16] They paid fines totalling over $700 million and numerous executives were sentenced to jail time.

Rambus has alleged that, as part of the conspiracy, the DRAM manufacturers acted to depress the price of DDR memory in an effort to prevent RDRAM from succeeding in the market. Those alleg