Joey and all, Article... Intel to support PC133 SDRAM -- Price of Rambus remains to high for general adoption
August 3, 1999
COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS : Special from Electronic Engineering Times - With the introduction of Rambus-based desktops only about two months away, Intel Corp. said last month the price of Rambus technology remains too high for general adoption and signaled its intent to support PC133 SDRAMs as an alternative and complementary memory architecture by the first half of 2000.
That scenario will create a memory technology wrestling match, played out next year in a marketplace where Intel exerts considerable sway, pitting the faster, more expensive Rambus DRAMs against the cheaper 133MHz SDRAMs. With PCs rapidly becoming a consumer item for which cost is a prime consideration, some analysts question whether Intel will be able to establish the Rambus technology in the mainstream PC market.
Intel's decision to "proactively evaluate" a chip set that would support the 133MHz SDRAMs will be explained further at the Intel Developer Forum, planned for Aug. 31-Sept. 2 in Palm Springs, Calif., said Peter MacWilliams, an Intel fellow and director of platform architecture for the company.
Intel quickly could create a chip set for the Pentium III that would support 133MHz SDRAMs, MacWilliams said, adding that "there is a lot of noise but very little benefit" to system performance in adding PC133 support. A PC100 SDRAM with a CAS latency of two clock cycles would provide the same performance as a PC133 solution with a CAS 3 access time, he said.
Other observers argue the PC133 DRAMs are a good match to Pentium III-based systems with a 133MHz bus architecture and come in at a cost the mainstream PC market can absorb.
Intel Vice President Pat Gelsinger said he envisions the PC133 memories selling well in the smaller commercial and small-office/home-office accounts but not in the consumer marketplace.
At the forum, Intel will disclose benchmarks that will validate the company's support for the Rambus technology, Gelsinger said.
The technology "looks to be solid" for the planned September introduction of commercial systems based on the Direct RDRAMs, MacWilliams said. Intel has ironed the bugs out of its 820 Camino chip set and will be in "sufficient volumes" by the third quarter, he said.
"The third-quarter introduction is still on track," MacWilliams said. "It is still a go. The key ingredients are all there-the clock chips, the connectors, the RIMMs [Rambus-in-line memory modules]. We have five suppliers of the 72-Mbit RDRAMs, and five for the 128-[Mbit and] 144-Mbit RDRAMs. The key issue is we have production versions of the chip set."
Getting the industry to standardize on a single PC133 dual-in-line memory module (DIMM) will take time and resources, MacWilliams said. And the performance of a PC133 SDRAM with a 3-3-3 architecture (CAS, refresh and RAS) could be inferior to a PC100 part with a 2-2-2 specification, something that could be supported by today's BX chip set architecture, he said.
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