Toshiba, Hitachi make deals with Rambus

DRAM technology developer Rambus announced that Japan’s Hitachi and Toshiba chipmakers have agreed to pay license fees on the Rambus-based DRAM technology. These two companies had been some of the last hold-outs in the industry to agree to pay for the Rambus R-DRAM technology which vastly speeds up the interchange of data between the memory chips and microprocessor.

Rambus had filed a lawsuit against Hitachi in January, accusing the company infringing on its patents. Hitachi this week agreed to pay Rambus an undisclosed settlement fee and make quarterly royalty payments. Last Friday, Toshiba also agreed to pay Rambus royalties for using a broad range of memory-chip designs.

Analysts said that after Toshiba agreed to pay Rambus, Hitachi had little choice but to negotiate for a settlement. They predicted that NEC would probably follow suit soon. Intel of course, has been pushing for adoption of the Rambus technology, despite the fact that the chips are more difficult and expensive to produce.

With just about all of the major DRAM producers agreeing to use the Rambus technology, the company’s financial future appears secure. It will be more difficult for other techniques, such as IBM’s double-data-rate (DDR) technology to be adopted.