Rambus refocuses on bringing innovations to market

New ceo Ron Black has charged the company's Labs business with developing technologies which will increase its market capitalisation by $1billion. Chief marketing officer Jerome Nadel said: "We've settled with SK Hynix and STMicroelectronics; now, we're looking to resolve the other open disputes. Rambus is about more than patent licensing around a memory architecture." Black's focus is now on reshaping Rambus; on developing new products and solutions and bringing those products to market. "We have the technical acumen," Nadel claimed, "now, it's about how to be commercially relevant and how to make our business areas perform better." Once known only for its memory technology, Rambus is now looking in other directions. It has three revenue generating business units – Memory and Interfaces, Cryptography Research and Lighting and Displays –complemented by Rambus Labs and a unit addressing computational sensing and imaging. Rambus acquired a portfolio of lighting and optoelectronics patents and technology from Global Lighting Technologies in 2009. One of the fruits of this acquisition is a range of adjustable led lights. The approach is intended to cater for manufacturing variations in leds. Simply by twisting an integral ring in the bulb, consumers can change the colour temperature of their light. The lights also feature MicroLens optics, which allows more omnidirectional lighting. Rambus also has particular interest in sensors and imaging; announcing its binary pixel technology (BPI) earlier this year at Mobile World Congress. A soon to be released complementary technology is set to expand the company's focus into the broader internet of things market. BPI is designed to address the issues associated with traditional imagers, including dynamic range and low light sensitivity. "With our technologies," Nadel concluded, "we're well placed to capitalise on future trends."