Rambus - Q3 2024
October 28, 2024
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Welcome to the Rambus third quarter fiscal year twenty twenty-four earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. At the conclusion of our prepared remarks, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star one on your touchtone phone at any time. If anyone should require assistance during the conference, please press star zero at any time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Desmond Lynch, Chief Financial Officer. You may begin your conference.
Desmond Lynch (CFO)
Thank you, operator, and welcome to the Rambus third quarter 2024 results conference call. I am Desmond Lynch, Chief Financial Officer at Rambus, and on the call with me today is Luc Seraphin, our CEO. The press release for the results that we will be discussing today has been filed with the SEC on Form 8-K. We are webcasting this call along with slides that we will reference during portions of today's call. A replay of this call can be accessed on our website beginning today at 5:00 P.M. Pacific Time. Our discussions today will contain forward-looking statements, including our expectations regarding projected financial results, financial prospects, market growth, demand for our solutions and other market factors, and the effects of ASC 606 on reported revenue, amongst other items.
These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may be discussed during this call and are more fully described in the documents we file with the SEC, including our 8-Ks, 10-Qs, and 10-Ks. These forward-looking statements may differ materially from our actual results, and we are under no obligation to update these statements. In an effort to provide greater clarity in the financials, we are using both GAAP and non-GAAP financial presentations in both our press release and on this call. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financials to the most directly comparable GAAP measures has been included in our press release, in our slide presentation, and on our website at rambus.com on the Investor Relations page under Financial Releases. In addition, we will continue to provide operational metrics such as licensing billings to give our investors better insight into our operational performance.
The order of our call today will be as follows: Luc will start with an overview of the business, I will discuss our financial results, and then we will end with Q&A. I'll now turn the call over to Luc to provide an overview of the quarter. Luc?
Luc Seraphin (CEO)
Thank you, Des, and good afternoon, everyone. In Q3, the company delivered strong sequential growth, fueled by a double-digit increase in product revenue, driven by continued market leadership from our DDR5 memory interface chips and sustained execution across our growing portfolio of products, and while we invest in our product and technology leadership, we continue to generate excellent cash from operations and deliver consistent return of value to our stockholders. In Q3 alone, we generated $62 million of cash from our operations and repurchased $50 million of stock, marking our fifth consecutive quarter of share repurchases.
In continued demonstration of our product leadership, earlier this month, we were the first to introduce complete chipsets for industry-standard DDR5 MRDIMMs at 12,800 megatransfers per second and RDIMMs at 8,000 megatransfers per second, which are commonly referred to as the MRDIMM 12,800 and RDIMM 8,000, respectively. Designed to meet the insatiable demand for higher memory performance in advanced data center and AI workloads, these new chipsets represent a significant expansion of our addressable market and long-term growth opportunity. In Q3, memory interface chips delivered revenue of $66 million, up 17% sequentially and 27% year over year. And in Q4, we anticipate our third consecutive quarter of double-digit sequential growth.
As expected, we are pleased to see that data center demand growth in the second half of this year is driving increased sales of our core DDR5 RCD products, where we continue to gain share and early contributions from new products. We are also very excited by the positive customer feedback on our new products, with qualification shipments on the way for both server and client applications. The rapid development of new leadership memory subsystem products is critical to the sustained advancement of powerful server architectures, and the growth of AI and other data-intensive applications are accelerating the cadence of new products. As a fundamental pillar to our growth strategy, we will continue to leverage our strong balance sheet to support our strategic investments in new products, to expand our market opportunity and to drive the long-term growth of the company.
The recent introductions of our complete chipsets for the industry standard DDR5 MRDIMM 12,800 and RDIMM 8,000, which I mentioned earlier, are great illustrations of this strategy in action. These new chipsets enable the next wave of DDR5-based systems and incorporate the advanced clocking, control, and power management features needed for higher capacity and higher bandwidth modules. As a recap, our newly announced offerings for DDR5-based systems include the Gen 5 RCD, enabling next-generation standard RDIMMs operating at 8,000 megatransfers per second, the multiplexed RCD or MRCD, and multiplexed data buffer or MDB, enabling industry-standard MRDIMMs running at 12,800 megatransfers per second, and finally, the second-generation server PMIC, designed for both the RDIMM and MRDIMM. Our SPD hub and temperature sensor are also utilized in both the MRDIMM and RDIMM memory modules, rounding out our comprehensive chipset offerings.
These chipsets are designed to intercept future generation server platforms currently targeted for 2026 and beyond that will use the next wave of DDR5. As part of this next wave, the RDIMM 8000 and MRDIMM 12800 are designed around a common architecture that allows an end user to populate a server with either module type, enabling flexible and scalable server memory configurations. Addressing a broad range of traditional and AI servers, a DDR5 RDIMM 8000 utilizes the Gen 5 RCD and next-generation server PMIC to deliver more than 67% greater bandwidth versus the first generation of DDR5. This represents an important new benchmark in server main memory and supports the ongoing growth of AI and other compute-intensive workloads.
As AI continues to scale with larger and more complex models demanding ever greater memory, bandwidth, and capacity, the industry-standard MRDIMM will be key to extending the DDR5 roadmap to meet these needs. MRDIMM does this by employing a novel and efficient module design that boosts data transfer rates and system performance by multiplexing two ranks of DRAM. In order to support the increased complexity of this functionality, each DDR5 MRDIMM 12,800 requires one MRCD and 10 MDB chips to multiplex the memory channel and support more memory devices. This doubles the bandwidth and provides for greater capacity while using the same physical connections of DDR5 RDIMMs. As I previously mentioned, our second-generation server PMIC is part of the chipset for both the RDIMM 8,000 and MRDIMM 12,800.
This new server PMIC supports higher speeds as well as more DRAM and logic chips per module. This second-generation server PMIC, along with the Gen 5 RCD, MRCD, and MDB, are further demonstrations of Rambus product leadership and are exciting new additions to our chip portfolio that significantly increase our addressable market in the years to come. Turning to Silicon IP, AI continues to drive long-term momentum across our IP business. We further expanded our portfolio of leading AI-focused offerings with the introduction of the industry's first HBM4 Controller IP. This new HBM4 Controller IP provides a vital building block for cutting-edge AI accelerators, graphics, and HPC applications. Looking ahead, the requirements for power, performance, and security will only intensify, spurred by generative AI and other data-intensive workloads.
Across all of our businesses, Rambus is strategically focused on advancing system memory, bandwidth, and capacity through innovative memory, connectivity, and power management solutions. In closing, Q3 was a strong quarter for the company, driven by excellent execution and double-digit product revenue growth from our chip business. Consistent with our view that we would see our performance strengthening throughout the year, we are poised for another quarter of double-digit product revenue growth in Q4 and are on track for greater than 30% product growth in the second half compared to the first half of the year. Through our continued leadership in DDR5 RCDs, growing momentum in new products, and the introduction of our industry-first MRDIMM and RDIMM chipsets, we continue to expand our addressable market and are well positioned to capitalize on secular trends in data center and AI.
Our strong cash generation enables us to continue investing in innovative products and to pursue strategic initiatives that drive the long-term growth of the company while consistently delivering value to our stockholders. As always, I'd like to thank our customers, partners, and employees for their ongoing support. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Des to discuss the quarterly financial results. Des?
Desmond Lynch (CFO)
Thank you, Luc. I'd like to begin with a summary of our financial results for the third quarter on slide five. We are pleased with our strong Q3 financial results. Our team delivered double-digit product revenue growth with strong cash generation in the quarter. Our profitable results and outstanding cash generation allow us to continue to strategically invest in our product roadmap and return capital to our shareholders through share repurchases. Let me now provide you a summary of our non-GAAP income statement on slide six. Revenue for the third quarter was $145.5 million, which was in line with our expectations. Royalty revenue was $64.1 million, while licensing billings were $65.4 million.
The difference between licensing billings and royalty revenue mainly relates to timing, as we do not always recognize revenue in the same quarter as we bill our customers. Product revenue was $66.4 million, up 17% sequentially and up 27% year over year, driven by continued strength in DDR5. Contract and other revenue was $15 million, consisting predominantly of Silicon IP. As a reminder, only a portion of our Silicon IP revenue is reflected in contract and other revenue, and the remaining portion is reported in royalty revenue as well as in licensing billings. Total operating costs, including cost of goods sold for the quarter, were $80.5 million. Operating expenses of $55.3 million were in line with our expectations, and we ended the quarter with a total headcount of 685.
GAAP interest and other income for the third quarter was $4.3 million, which includes $100,000 of ASC 606 interest income. Using an assumed flat tax rate of 22% for non-GAAP pre-tax income, non-GAAP net income for the quarter was $54.1 million. Now, let me turn to the balance sheet details on slide 7. We ended the quarter with cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities totaling $432.7 million. This is flat to Q2, as our strong cash from operations of $62.1 million was offset by stock repurchases and capital expenditures. In the quarter, we repurchased $50 million of stock, which retired approximately 1.2 million shares in our fifth consecutive quarter of executing share buybacks.
Third quarter capital expenditures was $13.5 million, while depreciation expense was $6.7 million. We delivered $48.6 million of free cash flow in the quarter. Let me now review our outlook for the fourth quarter on slide 8. As a reminder, the forward-looking guidance reflects our current best estimates at this time. We continue to actively monitor the macro environment, and our actual results could differ materially from what I'm about to review. In addition to the financial outlook under ASC 606, we also provide information on licensing billings, which is an operational metric that reflects amounts invoiced to our licensing customers during the period, adjusted for certain differences. As we have reported historically, licensing billings closely correlates with what we had historically reported as royalty revenue under ASC 605.
Under ASC 606, we expect revenue in the fourth quarter to be between $154 and $160 million. We expect royalty revenue to be between $54 and $60 million, and licensing billings between $57 and $63 million. We expect Q4 non-GAAP total operating costs, which include COGS, to be between $86 and $82 million. We expect Q4 capital expenditures to be approximately $11 million. Under ASC 606, non-GAAP operating results for the fourth quarter is expected to be between a profit of $68 and $78 million. For non-GAAP interest and other income and expense, we expect $4 million of interest income. We expect the pro forma tax rate to be approximately 22%, with non-GAAP tax expenses expected to be between $16 and $18 million in Q4.
We expect Q4 share count to be 108 million diluted shares outstanding. Overall, we anticipate the Q4 non-GAAP earnings per share range between $0.52 and $0.59. Let me finish with a summary on slide nine. In closing, I'm pleased with our financial results and continued execution. In Q3, our team delivered double-digit product revenue growth with continued strong cash generation. Through our leadership and organic investments in DDR5 solutions, we are well-positioned to capture the long-term opportunity ahead of us, while continuing to deliver value to our stockholders. Before I open up the call to Q&A, I would like to thank our employees for their continued teamwork and execution. With that, I'll turn the call back to our operator to begin Q&A. Could we have our first question?
Operator (participant)
... Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star followed by one on your touchtone phone. And our first question today is from the line of Kevin Cassidy with Rosenblatt Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Kevin Cassidy (Analyst)
Thanks for taking my question, and congratulations on the good results. But just on the results, maybe just to help clarify the guidance for the contract revenue was $17 million-$23 million, and you came in at $15 million. And I know you did much better on the licensing, but maybe can you just talk what some of the moving parts might have been there?
Desmond Lynch (CFO)
Hi, Kevin. Thanks for your question. As we've sort of talked about previously, Silicon IP's revenue can show up under both contract and other, and licensing billings. If we customize the IP, then it's classified as contract and other. And if the IP is sold off the shelf, it will show up under licensing billings. So if you really look at our Q3 results, what we did see is Silicon IP revenue was relatively flat quarter over quarter, at $28 million-$29 million. However, you did see a shift in revenue between the classification as we sold more off-the-shelf IP, which resulted in higher licensing billings, which was offset by lower contract and other revenue. If you zoom out from an annual perspective, Kevin, I would expect around $40 million of Silicon IP to show up under the licensing billings number.
And if you add that to the contract and other revenue of around about $80 million, you will see a business that's growing in line with our expectation and continuing to operate at scale. But overall, we're very pleased with our performance in Silicon IP, and we're on track to meet our annual growth rate targets here.
Kevin Cassidy (Analyst)
Okay, great. Thanks for that explanation, and maybe just for further explanation, you announced having the HBM4 controller. But that's, I guess, CPUs using that is, you know, expected a couple of years out. Do you get paid for this now? Is this a license that you would sign and get paid currently, or do you have to wait for the device to the CPU to be in production?
Luc Seraphin (CEO)
Hi, Kevin. Thank you for your question. Typically, we get paid when we deliver the IP to our customers, and we've done this consistently over the years. We've been actually leading, you know, the HBM, you know, roadmap with this IP. You know, we announced our HBM3 in 2021, our HBM3 in 2023, and this year we are announcing our HBM4. And every time we have a wave of silicon companies that buy that IP in the form of license. So we do not wait for these products to go to production to get paid for these licensing.
Kevin Cassidy (Analyst)
Okay, great. I'll get back in the queue, let other people ask questions.
Operator (participant)
The next question today will be from the line of Blaine Curtis with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Blayne Curtis (Analyst)
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question and congrats on the product revenue growth. Maybe I just wanna follow up on Kevin's question. In terms of the Silicon IP, I'm not sure I followed the math, but I guess for the guide, you know, it's kinda lumpy in contract revenue, and you have it back up. And you had talked about kind of the Silicon IP growing at, like, 10%-15%. I don't think it's been growing that fast. So I'm just kinda curious, is this kind of a base that it grows off of, or is it kinda lumpy and comes back down? It's just hard to kinda reconcile on a quarterly basis there, but maybe you can talk about if there's anything in December, and then if that 10%-15% growth is still the right number.
Desmond Lynch (CFO)
Hi, Blaine, it's Des. You are correct. The correct way to think about Silicon IP is that growing that 10%-15%. This year, we do expect Silicon IP to grow around 10%, which is in line with that 10%-15% expectation. When you look at the revenue, it is split, Silicon IP, as I mentioned earlier, across the two categories. One, there is a component within licensing billings, let's just call it $40 million for the round numbers there, and you also have around $80 million within contract and others, so that takes the business to about $120 million this year, which is up about 10% compared to last year, when you normalize for the PHY divestiture from there, and we're really excited about the business sorta going forward.
We have released new products this year, which are really targeted towards the AI solutions, which includes HBM4, PCIe 7, and GDDR7 solutions. So going forward, I would expect the business to grow that 10%-15%, going into sort of next year, and we've been executing at that sort of growth rate in 2024.
Blayne Curtis (Analyst)
Thanks, and I just had a question on product. DDR4 had been quite small. I was just kinda curious within this pickup. Is it still small levels, or has it recovered any bit?
Luc Seraphin (CEO)
DDR4 is still at, you know, small levels, you know, as expected. We've seen the sixth consecutive decline of inventories, you know, in the channel. However, you know, the sales of DDR4 remain modest, you know, and Des indicated in the last quarter, it's about $5 million a quarter, and we see this continuing. We see a long tail, but with slow sales. The good news for us is that, you know, most of our sales, you know, that's growing, you know, this double-digit quarter over quarter is coming from DDR5. We were expecting this, given the good design win footprint that we had on several generations of DDR5.
So that translates now into, you know, that growth that you're seeing in Q3 and that we're expecting in Q4. But, you know, DDR4 plays a very modest role, you know, in that growth. Most of our sales are in DDR5.
Blayne Curtis (Analyst)
Thanks so much.
Operator (participant)
The next question today will be from the line of Mehdi Hosseini with SIG. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Mehdi Hosseini (Analyst)
Yes, thanks for taking my question. First one is for Luc. When I look at your product revenue, you've had a very nice incremental increase from Q1 to Q4, so from $50 million to $75 million, and $25 million of incremental increase. What I want to learn from you is, how much of these $25 million of incremental increase is driven by CXL, and how much of it is just a migration to DDR5? And if we were to look into next year, should we assume kind of a scaling from the $75 million that you're exiting 2024 from?
Luc Seraphin (CEO)
Thank you, Mehdi. In terms of the second half of this year, you're correct. You know, our product revenue for the second half of this year is gonna be about 30% higher than the first part of this year. There are two contributors to that. The main contributor is, as I said earlier, DDR5. We've worked over the last few years in making sure that we're leading the DDR5 race by introducing DDR5 products first in the market to secure the footprint, and that footprint is translating now into market share. So that DDR5 market share is explaining the growth, you know, second half compared to first half. We also have, you know, the initial sales of companion chips.
We know we missed the first generation of products, but we're starting to ship those shipments. You know, Q4 should see an increase versus Q3. And we're also very excited with you know, the traction that we have on our first wave of Phoenix products, which are in qualification, you know, with our customers and where we see qualification volumes into Q4. So the main contributor is DDR5, you know, followed by a modest contribution of shipments in the second half, but growing, with growing qualification footprint. And I think we're going to see that pattern over and over again. That's why we announced, you know, the MRDIMM products, the second generation of PMICs as well.
Because, you know, being first in the market with these leading-edge products eventually translates into market share. So that explains, you know, the growth that you saw between Q1 and Q4 of this year. We expect continued growth next year, you know, on our product revenue, probably with a similar pattern as this year. You know, Granite Rapids has been announced. Typically, when a product is announced, it takes, you know, six months plus before, you know, it's in full production. So we're gonna see qualification volumes, pre-production volumes into the first half and then, you know, full volume production in the second half. So we're gonna see a similar pattern as we saw with Emerald Rapids.
You know, our components will continue to, you know, go through their qualification process with our customers and our customers' customers, and we'll continue to contribute growth quarter over quarter, with, you know, them being in full swing in the second half of next year.
Mehdi Hosseini (Analyst)
Great. And just a quick follow-up for Des. You're exiting the year with a product cost margin of low 60%. Should we think of product cost margin trending towards the higher end of your guided range of 60%-65%?
Desmond Lynch (CFO)
Hey, Mehdi, good question. You know, what I would say is we are pleased with the gross margin performance in Q3. We ended around 63%, which was up 3% against Q2, driven by stronger product mix in the quarter. As a company, we have a real strong track record of being disciplined in our approach to pricing and continuing to drive cost savings, which have led to us driving and leading these strong product gross margins. You know, for the full year of 2024, I would expect gross margins to be around 61%-62% on the sort of chip side, which is both in line with our historical performance of 2022 and 2023, and are also our long-term target of 60%-65%. So that's really where we've been operating for Mehdi.
In any given quarter, we could see the margins moving up or down, depending upon what products are shipping. But again, over the longer term, in the course of a year, we have a really strong track record of driving towards these gross margins.
Mehdi Hosseini (Analyst)
Great. Thank you.
Desmond Lynch (CFO)
Thanks, Mehdi.
Operator (participant)
The next question today is from the line of Nam Kim with Arete Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Nam Hyung Kim (Analyst)
Hi, thanks for taking my question. Can you give us a update on CXL controller chip development and timeline? Recently, I feel the market sentiment of a CXL doesn't seem very strong compared to a few years ago, maybe due to HBM. You know, what's your view on CXL market in general and your opportunity there?
Luc Seraphin (CEO)
... Hello, Nam, thank you for your question. First of all, we do see, you know, CXL playing a role in our silicon IP growth. We continue to see people, you know, buying from us, CXL IP, or PCIe IP for that, for that matter, which is a sign that a lot of chips are actually using CXL interfaces. But at the same time, what we see is there's a fragmentation of that market. A lot of very different chips, you know, custom chips are using the CXL interface, and that's good for us from a silicon IP business.
On the product side, you know, we do have a product out with customers, in the hands of our customers, and they are testing those products and more precisely, testing the use case of those products. We believe, however, that, you know, the market will consolidate, you know, at the Diamond Rapids node, at CXL 3.0. Until then, it's gonna be very fragmented. That's our view.
The other thing is that there are some use cases, such as, you know, memory expansion, that are going to be addressed by alternative solutions like the MRDIMMs that we've just announced, which allows actually to use more bandwidth and more capacity on, you know, existing infrastructure, where, you know, the whole ecosystem has agreed on the same solutions for the industry. So this is a place that we understand, that we are monitoring. We're enjoying the growth on the silicon IP side for CXL IP. We're ready for the CXL 3.0 node on the product side, but we don't believe it's gonna be, you know, sufficient volumes, on a standard type of product until, yeah, you know, CXL 3.0 is out.
But we're also investing in MRDIMM for applications such as memory expansion.
Nam Hyung Kim (Analyst)
Okay, thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question today will be from the line of Gary Mobley with Loop Capital. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Gary Mobley (Analyst)
Hi, guys. Thank you so much for allowing me to ask a question. Sorry, I missed the last earnings call. Luc, you spent a lot of time in your prepared remarks talking about MRDIMM, and I think it's an important topic and a consequential market evolution over time. But the way I think the technology first evolved was specific to Granite Rapids from Intel, and then maybe some joint development between Intel, Hynix, and Renesas initially. And if I'm not mistaken, MRDIMM has moved its way into the JEDEC standard set, and thus has become more open for folks like you to develop product.
Correct me if I'm wrong in that review of the market evolution, but my question for you is, do you think, given how that market evolved, that you will have equal to or greater market share in MRDIMM than you have in current generations of DDR5 DIMM modules?
Luc Seraphin (CEO)
Thanks, Gary. Welcome back. You're correct on your first statement that there were some point solutions in mRDIMM that were not JEDEC compliant, that you know, were probably good proof of concepts for the ability to increase bandwidth, you know, on existing infrastructure. And you know, the one we are announcing is you know, the first JEDEC standard MRDIMM at 12,800, which is you know, a notch higher than the current speeds, which is also adopted by the whole industry.
You know, while we were not participating to the custom solution in the first generation, we were working on that JEDEC solution, you know, from day one, because we think this is the one that is gonna get traction in the market, as you said correctly, with you know, with the Diamond Rapids node. For this generation, not only are we developing the MRCD chipset, the MDB chipset, but as I said in my prepared remarks, we have got very good feedback on our first generation of PMIC. The PMIC is becoming more complex for MRDIMM, so we are also developing the PMIC for the MRDIMM solution. Our you know, our objective there is, over time, you know, to get a similar market share as we have in the RCD market.
You know, this is a market that is going to show, you know, early volumes in 2026 for us. So we have, you know, next year to introduce the products to the market, to go through the standard qualification with our customers and our customers' customers. But we're gonna have a complete chipset, including the PMIC. And, you know, our goal is to reach the similar market share as we have on the standard RCD. You know, the other aspect of MRDIMM is that the content increases, just, by the nature of what it is. We have one RCD chip per module and 10 DB chips per module. We will also have a complete power management and companion offering there.
So the content per module is gonna be at least four times what you see on the current RDIMM. So that's, you know, that's what we talk about when we say it's gonna be a SAM expansion for us.
Gary Mobley (Analyst)
Thank you for that clarification. Seeing the product revenue up 30% second half versus first half, one thing you didn't mention that probably is factoring into that is the general market recovery and, you know, general server demand, but as well, some inventory depletion in that specific channel. So to what degree is that impacting your outlook here and your trends in the second half of the year for product revenue? And how can you be sure that this isn't maybe another situation of an inventory rebuild and setting up for a situation like we saw back in maybe two thousand and twenty-two?
Luc Seraphin (CEO)
That's a good question. So yes, you're correct. We did see a recovery of the standard server market in the second half, so that's helping us. You know, our view of the server market is that, you know, this year is growing about the mid single digit. You know, if you take the midpoint of our guidance for Q4, you know, our product business should grow, you know, low double digits. So, you know, just from that standpoint, you know, we believe we are gaining share. On the DDR4, and I'll come back to DDR5, you know, on DDR4, we do see ongoing inventory depletion. You know, we were starting from a very challenging point in early 2023.
You know, on DDR5, we're not too concerned about the levels of inventory. You know, they are in line with what we would expect for people to, you know, start production or pre-production, depending on what generations they are in. So the levels of inventory on the DDR5 side of things are reasonable at this point in time.
Gary Mobley (Analyst)
Thank you, guys.
Desmond Lynch (CFO)
Thanks, Gary.
Operator (participant)
As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one on your touchtone phone, and our next question today will be from the line of Kevin Cassidy with Rosenblatt Securities.
Kevin Cassidy (Analyst)
Yeah, thanks for taking my follow-up question and appreciate the details on the MRDIMM being four times the content of the RDIMM. What are the expectations for, I guess, the number of CPUs, or will this be the new standard? Will most servers use the MRDIMM architecture versus RDIMM?
Luc Seraphin (CEO)
It really depends. That's a good question, Kevin. It really depends on the use cases. You know, typically, the MRDIMM will provide, you know, large capacities and very high bandwidth. So, you know, at a first approximation, one would say that if you take an AI box, for example, you know, for new processes, you know, standard CPUs that do all the pre-processing, that's the typical type of application that would use an MRDIMM. Because, you know, in that AI box, you know, the CPUs, you know, requires a lot of memory and very high bandwidth, so that's a natural place for MRDIMMs. And you'll find it in other, you know, applications where the loads are important.
But you know, they will not cannibalize the standard RDIMM market, as you know, there are a lot of applications that don't need that type of bandwidth. So that's why we see, you know, mRDIMM as an addition to our current standard view, you know, in 2026, and it will start in the very high-end, data-intensive type of applications, such as AI, AI boxes.
Kevin Cassidy (Analyst)
Okay, great. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question today is from the line of Mehdi Hosseini with SIG. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Mehdi Hosseini (Analyst)
Yes, just two quick follow-up for me. And on HBM4, thanks for highlighting opportunities, but just, is there any way you can help me better understand and compare, Rambus's content, IP content in HBM4 and how it compares to HBM3E? And then one follow-up for Des: How should I think about operating leverage looking into next year? And I'm not asking for a specific twenty twenty-five OpEx guide, but just wanna get a feel for the leverage, given all the investment that you have made in general.
Luc Seraphin (CEO)
Mehdi, yes. Thank you for the question on HBM. First of all, you know, we've been, you know, developing HBM controllers, you know, for many years. So what we provide is actually the HBM controller that sits right before the PHY. You know, we've had a history of providing HBM ahead of the market. We announced our HBM2E in 2020, you know, HBM3 in 2021, HBM3 last year, HBM4 this year, and the difference between HBM3 and HBM4 is really a question of speed, you know, on that interface. And typically, when we release a new version of our HBM controller, we try to beat, you know, the speed that are defined by JEDEC, so that, you know, our customers have room, you know, for their designs.
So the main difference is the speed, but the basic offering is the same. That's an HBM memory controller that you know, CPU vendors, NPU vendors, DPU vendors, you know, ASIC vendors can use to integrate into their chips.
Desmond Lynch (CFO)
Hi, Mehdi, it's Des. Let me jump into the OpEx sort of question that you asked. I think as a company, we've done a very nice job in managing our expenses, where we've really struck a good balance between being disciplined and really investing at the right level to support our future growth opportunities. In twenty twenty-four, I've been delighted with our R&D execution and new product rollout, which really has been achieved under a similar operating expense envelope, as we've reinvested the divested R&D expense back into the product programs, and as Luc mentioned in his prepared remarks, this has significantly increased the market opportunity from there.
But looking ahead into sort of next year, I would say that R&D, we've been operating, you know, $36 million-$38 million per quarter, on the R&D side, and you will see additional, investment to support a new product roadmap. Maybe the correct way to think about this is being around 23%-25% of revenue might be a reasonable framework for you to think about. And then in terms of the SG&A side, we've been relatively stable at that $19 million-$20 million per quarter. You will see certain inflationary, you know, increases here, but really, as the top line grows, you'll get to see some nice leverage on the SG&A side, from there. But overall, I think we've been very happy with, our investments into the business.
They're paying off as a result of the new products we're releasing, which are increasing the future opportunities for us going ahead.
Mehdi Hosseini (Analyst)
Thank you.
Desmond Lynch (CFO)
Thanks, Manny.
Operator (participant)
Our next question is from the line of Nam Kim with Arete Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Nam Hyung Kim (Analyst)
Hi, thank you. So another question related to the MRDIMM. I understand industry has been developing two new DIM, like MRDIMM and the other one, MCRDIMM, if I'm recall correct. Now, I'm not sure if those two standards emerged recently, but I understand Rambus is not part of MCRDIMM initiative. So can you explain why, and what's your view on MRDIMM versus MCRDIMM?
Luc Seraphin (CEO)
Hi, Manny. To my knowledge, we are participating in every, you know, JEDEC standard that, you know, that is related to mRDIMM or MCRDIMM. You know, we are, you know, like many other companies, we're part of JEDEC. You know, we're participating into those definitions, and our objective as a company, just like we did for the mRDIMM, is to be present for every JEDEC product that is out there.
Nam Hyung Kim (Analyst)
So are you also involved with the MCRDIMM? I think MCRDIMM is not JEDEC standard, but I'm curious, you see opportunity there.
Luc Seraphin (CEO)
We are developing JEDEC standard, Nam. You know, we are developing JEDEC standard.
Nam Hyung Kim (Analyst)
Okay, got it.
Luc Seraphin (CEO)
That's our strategy. Because as we said earlier, the investments for these type of solutions are huge, not only on our side, but also, you know, on the part of our partners in the ecosystem. And it's important for us to make sure that there is traction in the whole ecosystem for, you know, the development of, you know, high volume solutions as opposed to, you know, custom solutions, which, you know, when you take custom solutions and you add them up, you know, the market may be large, but every single player in the market might not have, you know, revenues that justify the investments.
By, you know, focusing on JEDEC standards, whether it's for RDIMM or MRDIMM or for all the products we make, we're sure of the adoption of the whole industry, which drives, you know, revenue growth, as opposed to depending on, you know, a custom solution for a set of different customers. So our strategy as a whole, and that's a very good question, our strategy as a whole is to develop products that are JEDEC or specified by JEDEC, so that we know we do have the momentum and the traction from the ecosystem, and we address a market that everyone is participating to, allowing us to, you know, have the growth that we expect to have as we did in the DDR5 generation of products.
Nam Hyung Kim (Analyst)
Thanks, Luc. It's pretty clear. Thanks.
Operator (participant)
At this time, there are no further questions. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Luc Seraphin for any closing remarks.
Luc Seraphin (CEO)
Thank you to everyone who has joined us today for your continued interest and time. We look forward to speaking with you again soon. Have a good day.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. This now concludes today's conference.