Since its launch in 1990, Rambus has made a significant portion of its revenues from licensing IP to those who want to build memory devices or include its memory interfaces in their SoCs.
And, for almost as long, Rambus has been pursuing in the US courts those it considered to have infringed its substantial patent portfolio. This activity caused some to view Rambus more as a 'patent troll' involved in ambushes, rather than a company trying to derive legitimate revenues. Rambus itself says this is the wrong interpretation.
Now, it's launching its own memory products. The first in what is said to be a new family of chips is being aimed at DDR4 applications in enterprise and data centre computing systems.
It sees the growth in the amount of data and the speed with which it must handled as opening an opportunity to get at least a toe hold in a burgeoning market. But others – perhaps more experienced in actually making memories – will also have their eyes on the market.
Gamekeeper turned poacher isn't the right analogy, but Rambus may well find selling memories to be more than a bit different to licensing IP.
