Rambus, in the midst of a crucial battle over its patent rights and facing slower-than-expected adoption of its memory technology, is moving to tap into the high-growth communications market.
The California company this week unveiled a new product, an I/O cell it will license for use in routers and switches. The 3.125G-bps Quad SerDes (Serializer/Deserializer) Cell marks the first license of the company's technology for a non-memory-related product.
In addition, Rambus announced it will partner with leading application-specific integrated circuit makers to develop network solutions to speed Internet communication. The partners include Hewlett-Packard, IBM, LSI Logic, NEC, Texas Instruments and Toshiba.
Sparring with Hitachi
As Rambus looks to branch out, it faces a legal challenge that could undermine its rights to its own core high-speed technology.
In January, Rambus filed suit against Hitachi Ltd. and its subsidiary, Hitachi Semiconductor America, accusing the companies of violating four patents tied to synchronous dynamic RAM. On Feb. 29, Rambus filed two more infringement claims based on patents that were issued that day.
Tokyo-based Hitachi late last month filed a countersuit asking a federal judge to invalidate several Rambus patents. Hitachi claims Rambus revised its patents, originally filed in 1990, after learning of competitors' plans during meetings to develop open industry standards.
"Rambus subverted the process," Hitachi claimed in a March 24 filing. "Rambus improperly revised its pending [patent] applications ... to cover what it learned from its participation in JEDEC [Joint Electronic Devices Engineering Council] and the disclosures of other JEDEC members and participants."
A Rambus official called the claims tied to JEDEC irrelevant.
"All in all, I think that in their answer to Rambus' complaint, they have attempted, I feel, to evade the issue and confuse matters through legal rhetoric," said Avo Kanadjian, vice president of Rambus.
"I'm hard-pressed to believe Rambus' claims on everything they say they've invented," said analyst Sherry Garber of Semico Research. "The industry is pretty old; a lot of those ideas were around for a long time. All Rambus has is their intellectual property. And if they can't prove that it's their intellectual property, I would think that would have a serious impact on Rambus."
