Avo Kanadjian, veteran vice president of marketing for Samsung Semiconductor America Inc., has joined Rambus to head up its marketing. The downside is the failure of Intel Corp. to invite Rambus to join its Next Generation DRAM alliance of the Big Five dynamic-memory firms to help design a chip for the 2004-2005 time period.

As reported last week by SBN, the alliance includes Intel, Samsung, Hyundai MicroElectronics, Micron Technology, the NEC-Hitachi memory combine and Infineon Technologies (see Dec. 22 story).

Kanadjian's sudden departure from Samsung to join Rambus surprised memory industry executives and analysts.

Sherry Garber, analyst with Semico Research Corp. in Phoenix, said Samsung was long the leading memory firm supporting Direct Rambus DRAM, so Kanadjian might be expected to join the design firm. However, she felt Kanadjian was a strong marketing leader for the U.S. operation of Samsung, which she believed had the largest revenue share for DRAMs in the world.

Kanadjian's direct-dial phone did not respond to calls today. Rambus officials also could not be reached before their offices opened today.

Kanadjian will be joining Rambus at a time when the memory firm may have suffered its biggest setback from Intel. Sources said Intel did not ask Rambus to join its Next Generation DRAM Alliance, despite Intel's long allegiance to the current Direct RDRAM chip.

Spokespersons for both Intel and Rambus declined to comment on the report that Rambus isn't part of the new DRAM alliance.

Semico's Garber said Intel's shunning of Rambus in its new alliance was a stunning development. Intel has dropped Direct RDRAM as its sole successor to PC100 SDRAMs, and this fall embraced PC133 for desktop PCs as well and Double Data Rate (DDR) SDRAMs for servers. Two weeks ago, in another shocking move, Intel pulled the plug on developing a mobile chip-set version that would have used Direct Rambus and instead will adapt its upcoming Solano PC133 chip set to a mobile configuration (see Dec. 14 story).