VIA's bet on DDR pays off

VIA Technologies (威盛電子) has won a de facto victory against Intel Corp in the US$20 billion computer memory market after most of the world's top memory chipmakers switched production to a technology standard backed by the Taiwanese company, executives and market pundits attending the DDR 333 Summit in Taipei said yesterday.

VIA chose to back DDR memory for its chipsets, while Intel championed Rambus memory to match its CPU, the brains of a computer. DDR beats Rambus memory on price and computer manufacturers love the chips.

"DDR is now the mainstream of the memory chip market. In 2001, it captured 30 percent of market share," said Desi Rhoden, president of Advanced Memory International Inc, a group that promotes standard memory chip technologies. "By mid-2002, it will be the market mainstream."

One by one, executives from five memory chip giants -- including Micron Technology Inc and Samsung Semiconductor Inc -- all stood up and showed how their own production shifts would increase DDR's market share to 50 percent or more by the middle of this year, while Rambus could sink to as low as 2 percent.

The battle has been far from fair. Intel has spent more than US$1 billion -- more than VIA made last year -- to back Rambus. VIA put up pocket change by comparison.

Intel, the world's largest computer CPU maker, chose Rambus in the mid-1990s, when the speed of their CPUs were being held up by slow memory chips. But the chips proved notoriously difficult to manufacture.

Some companies said they would have had to re-tool entire factories in order to produce Rambus chips.

In the late 1990s, Intel stepped in with cash infusions of US$500 million for a 6 percent stake in Micron and US$100 million for Samsung to help them find less-expensive ways to manufacture Rambus memory chips. They found some success, but price points remained high.

VIA swung in behind DDR and a predecessor chip by making chipsets to connect the memory chips to Intel Pentium III -- something no other company dared do in the face of mighty Intel -- and Pentium 4 chips.

Intel sued VIA for patent infringement in both cases. The Pentium III case was settled out of court for an unspecified amount. The Pentium 4 case continues.

VIA's first victory came when the market chose the less expensive DDR chips and VIA's chipsets along with them. The firm's revenue grew 171 percent in 2000 to almost US$1 billion as a result.

In early last year, VIA hosted its first DDR Summit, encouraging memory makers to do what comes natural: Manufacture the less-expensive DDR chips that their equipment could produce easily. At the time, Rambus was viewed as the only threat to DDR.

This year's DDR Summit, the second annual meeting, became merely a showcase for DDR memory chips, as the standard has already become just that. Rambus chips barely received mention.