Welcome to the major leagues of debt. Collateralized debt obligations, almost always referred to as a CDOs, are horrendously complicated deals that often leave anyone without a MBA wondering what was put into these CDOs.

The first thing to understand about bonds, (aka debt) is that bonds are often backed by something else. Think about your home mortgage. If you don't pay your mortgage, the bank can take the house. You end up homeless, and the bank sells the house to pay off the rest of that mortgage. There is something "backing" that mortgage; something lender can fall back on, if you don't pay your bills like a good human being. That's called collateral.

CDOs are one flavor of an entire sector of investing called structured finance, and they are also backed. CDOs, in the simplest concept, are just bonds backed by something else. In most cases, a CDO is backed by a collection of various types of debt. CDOs can be home mortgages, or other types of debt like credit cards, auto loans, and personal loans. Most of these types of debt are usually considered a bit more risky and they don't have the backing that a home loan does. So, if you think it through, you can imagine that CDOs are usually considered a risky investment.

To take a step further, understand that CDOs have multiple flavors within each CDO. These flavors are called tranches. If you've taken French, you might recognize the word, it means "slice" or "portion." Each slice of that CDO you invest in is a little different and carries different amounts of risk.

You could invest in the lowest risk tranche of the CDO, which would provide you lower risk. But, you don't get a good return on that investment. Or, you can be the heroic adventurer of bonds and invest in the lowest-grade tranche of the CDO. You'll make an amazing return, but if the economy even looks at you wrong, you might lose the entire investment.

CDOs aren¿t easy, and are almost always invested in by mutual funds, insurance companies and hedge funds. As an individual investor, you will probably not come across a CDO you can participate in.

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Monday, July 21, 2008

Rambus to Outline Mobile and MultiCore Memory Challenges and Solutions at MemCon 2008

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Jul 21, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) ----Rambus Inc. (NASDAQ:RMBS):

 Who: Rambus Inc. (NASDAQ: RMBS) Where: Denali MemCon 2008 Hyatt Regency 5101 Great America
   Parkway Santa Clara, CA Booth #14 When: July 21-24, 2008 Join Rambus at MemCon 2008 for demos, displays, and presentations
   of our latest technology developments. Rambus Presentations: Wednesday, July 23, 10:30 AM PDT Title: The Next Generation of
   Mobile Memory Presented by: Judy Chen, Ph.D., Strategic Marketing Manger and Fredrick Ware, Technical Director at Rambus Main
   Presentation Hall, Ballrooms E-H Thursday, July 24, 9:45 AM PT Title: Memory System Challenges in the MultiCore Era Presented
   by: Steven Woo, Ph.D., Technical Director Main Presentation Hall, Ballrooms E-H

Rambus Booth Demonstrations:

-- The Terabyte Bandwidth Initiative, featuring new memory signaling innovations that facilitate data rates of 16Gbps and a future memory architecture that can deliver an unprecedented terabyte per second (TB/s) of memory bandwidth (1 terabyte = 1,024 gigabytes) to a single System-on-Chip (SoC). Innovations include the industry's first differential signaling for both data and command/address (C/A); FlexLink(TM) C/A, the industry's first full-speed, point-to-point C/A link; and 32X Data Rate technology (32 data bits per input clock cycle).

-- The award-winning XDR(TM) memory architecture: a low-cost XDR system solution operating at 3.2Gbps data rate, on a two-layer printed circuit board. The test board shows a Rambus XDR PHY and memory controller interfacing to an XDR DRAM.

-- A PLAYSTATION(R)3 (PS3(TM)) Open Demo Board featuring XDR technology. The Rambus XDR memory interface and FlexIO(TM) processor bus enable an unprecedented aggregate bandwidth of over 90 gigabytes-per-second between the Cell Broadband Engine and supporting chips at the heart of the PS3.

-- TI DLP Open Demo Board: Rambus is showing an open TI DLP projector development board, highlighting Rambus XDR technology inside. The development board includes a 4.0Gbps, 16-bit XDR interface, an XDR Memory Controller (XMC), XDR memory cell interface (XIO), XDR DRAM, and the XDR Clock Generator (XCG). XDR has been adopted by TI for use in their DLP graphics engines, targeted at consumer projectors. TI DLP technology, included in Sharp projectors, is one of many consumer-level applications taking advantage of the XDR memory architecture.

For registration and additional information, please visit http://www.denali.com/memcon

About Rambus, Inc.

Rambus is one of the world's premier technology licensing companies specializing in the invention and design of high-speed memory architectures. Since its founding in 1990, the Company's patented innovations, breakthrough technologies and renowned integration expertise have helped industry-leading chip and system companies bring superior products to market. Rambus' technology and products solve customers' most complex chip and system-level interface challenges enabling unprecedented performance in computing, communications and consumer electronics applications. Rambus licenses both its world-class patent portfolio as well as its family of leadership and industry-standard interface products. Headquartered in Los Altos, California, Rambus has regional offices in North Carolina, India, Germany, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Additional information is available at www.rambus.com.

Rambus and the Rambus logo are registered trademarks of Rambus Inc. XDR, FlexPhase and FlexLink are trademarks of Rambus Inc. All other trade names are the service marks, trademarks, or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE: Rambus Inc.

Rambus Public Relations Linda Ashmore, 650-947-5411 lashmore@rambus.com or Citigate Cunningham for Rambus
   Lisa Kennedy, 415-618-8726 lkennedy@citigatecunningham.com