January 25, 1999, Issue: 1045
Section: International
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Rambus ramblings
David Lammers
Avo Kanadjian, the Samsung Semiconductor marketing vice president, said 1999 promises to stand on its head, put there by year 2000 in the first half and Rambus in the second.
Worldwide demand for PCs and other systems has been strong in the first quarter, when demand normally tanks after the Christmas rush. Companies need to prepare for the millennium early, because financial records roll forward into the year 2000, new fiscal years start in April, and so on.
But in the second half, demand for new systems may slump unless compelling new technology is introduced. Enter Rambus, tripping, stumbling, reeling, perhaps, but coming nonetheless. If enough of the Rambus-enabled systems are on the market by midyear, it could spark a revival for a PC industry desperate for something new to offer its customers.
At the beginning of this decade, when Gordon Moore sat down to listen to a new concept of memory architecture from Rambus founders Mike Farmwald, Mark Horowitz and venture capitalist Bill Davidow, I doubt if anyone imagined that at the end of the decade the industry would be straining to give birth to the Rambus architecture.
But here we are. Or aren't. Not enough of the Direct Rambus DRAMs are shipping. A few vendors have respec-table yields, but most DRAM vendors are barely yielding. LG Semicon, one of the early leaders, is totally distracted by its forced merger with Hyundai. NEC has part of its attention on VCM (virtual channel memory); and Micron, IBM and many others have been dragged most reluctantly to the Rambus party.
And that's probably too bad. A half-hearted approach to improving yields and creating a success does no one any good.
Intel is being forced to put its S-RIMM option into action, a worst-case scenario. The S-RIMMs might allow system vendors to ship boxes, but since a PC100 S-DRAM lacks the separate control and data buses that are part and parcel to the Direct Rambus architecture, performance with an S-RIMM-stuffed system may be awful. Noise on all those traces won't please the FCC either.
The best answer, of course, is to plow ahead, improve RDRAM yields quickly, get some great boxes out to the corporate customers so they can evaluate and probe, and then ramp like hell in the fourth quarter. That will take big capital investments (Korean fab investments this year will be down slightly, according to the Korean Development Bank), and total commitment to the Rambus approach, neither of which is in abundance right now.
Send feedback to dlammers@cmp.com.
Copyright ® 1999 CMP Media Inc.
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