AMD has licensed a raft of Rambus' memory controller technology patents, including intellectual property embedded in the DDR 2 and DDR 3 standards, the FB-DIMM and Rambus' own XDR system.

The licence will last for at least five years, but the two companies refused to disclose any other terms and conditions underpinning the deal. "Specific terms of the agreement are confidential," said the firms' joint announcement beneath a headline revealing AMD is paying $75m for the rights to the technology.

The statement also said the deal "covers all chips except memory", so expect AMD to use the technology in the memory controllers it builds into its processors, which, it's anticipated, will be upgraded to support at least DDR 2 in Q2 this year. ®

Related stories

FTC sets Rambus DDR SDRAM royalty rate (5 February 2007)
AMD to back FB-DIMM when it's as cheap as DDR 2? (28 June 2006)
FB-DIMM server memory approved as standard (10 May 2006)
Micron sets RICO on Rambus (22 February 2006)
Fourth DRAM cartel member fined $84m (31 January 2006)
AMD takes axe to Athlon 64 X2, Turion, Sempron prices (23 January 2006)
Rambus Q4 income drops 35 per cent (20 January 2006)
AMD looks to quintuple CPU cache capacity (20 January 2006)
DDR 2 prices on the rise (17 January 2006)
Rambus sues Micron (16 January 2006)
AMD ships dual-core gaming CPU (10 January 2006)
AMD in LIVE! sticker frenzy (4 January 2006)
Elpida samples 4GB FB-DIMMs (2 August 2005)
Rambus reports record revenue (15 July 2005)
Rambus unveils 8GHz XDR 2 (7 July 2005)
IBM licenses Rambus XDR interface (17 June 2005)
Rambus counter sues Samsung (16 June 2005)
Samsung countersues Rambus (14 June 2005)
Rambus sues Samsung (8 June 2005)
Rambus calls on co-founder to forecast future (25 May 2005)