The one million shares weren't the only incentive Rambus was willing to give away. A similar game was played with the memory manufacturers. 1997 Rambus Inc. authorized another 400,000 shares of stock for incentive programs. The first program had a five year life and again the warrants were priced at a mere $10 a share. This incentive program was made for memory makers. The first three memory manufacturers to meet the goals were supposed to get 30,000 Rambus shares for $10 each, currently equaling in some sweet 4.7 million dollars of easy profit. The three winners were LG Semicon, NEC and Samsung. My congratulations! Will their customers ever see any bit of that money?

Incentive program number three is worth 70,000 warrants, equaling in some 11 million dollars, for the first three memory makers that will ship 10 million RDRAM chips each.

This leaves another 100,000 shares for another program that we don't know about yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if Sony got a part of it for their Playstation 2 and another few of those warrants might get spread amongst press people, to make it that tiny bit easier for them to write nice stories about Rambus and the beloved RDRAM memory.

Forbes magazine reports, that Gary Harmon, CFO of Rambus, says that with a stock prize that is supposed to climb some ridiculous and in my eyes completely unjustified 310% in 2000, they are getting 'a lot of interest' into those incentive programs. Surprise surprise!

How Much Faith Would You Have?

What do you say? Do you believe that Intel is indeed supporting Rambus, because it is the only future proof memory? Do you think you will ever see any of those millions made by Intel or the memory makers that have met or will meet the goals of Rambus' incentive programs? You must be a very wishful thinker if you should indeed think that any of those companies is pushing or producing Rambus to make the life of any computer user out there any better. Money talks!!

Why do I really dislike Rambus? Well, a company that uses questionable benchmarks to prove that their product is better than others, a company that tries to wipe away benchmark data that show the opposite as 'inappropriate' and a company that is trying to buy its forced entry into the market with those kind of tactics is a company that I will never ever trust. I recommend that you keep it the same way. Buying Rambus is not exactly 'buying the future', but making sure that the coffers of a lot of people with very questionable motives are getting filled with your hard earned money. Do you want to support that?