I'm still very interested in how Kash thinks the engineers at Intel, Sony, Nintendo, Compaq, Dell, HP, Panasonic, and Texas Instruments (to name a few of the design wins) were bamboozled. You'd think with all those successful companies that they'd have smarter engineers than that <G>.
Dave,
Not to pick solely on Kash, but this is the one question the bear side of the argument has NEVER been able to come up with an answer for.
They like to focus on CURRENT RDRAM pricing vs SDRAM - Never mind that this is just like the pricing SDRAM had when it came out and the price will come down as all these DRAM manufacturers come on-line.
They think Intel is trying to ram this down everyone's throat. - Well that is quite true. Intel has been working on this for years. They have concluded that Rambus will give them the SCALEABLE memory design that will provide them with the headroom they need for years to come. SDRAM just will not do that. Why should they waste time and energy on SDRAM which is not scaleable? Will just one of the bears please explain to me how you are going to integrate an SDRAM memory controller on the processor chip? And how many pins will it require? And DDRDRAM? Oh that only needs a couple hundred pins?
They think that RDRAM will not work for the low end of the PC market and nobody will buy the high end PCs where RDRAM will make its first appearance, just like SDRAM did. Excuse me but ALL new technology starts off at the high end, not the low end. It will work its way down the line in time. No one ever expected RDRAM to appear in low end PCs this year except for the bear side. Get real. I wonder what their argument will be when a processor like Timna comes out? Meanwhile there is and will continue to be a market for the middle to high end of the PC line. To draw an analogy between cars and PCs, I haven't seen much of a dropoff in SUV sales lately. And I wouldn't exactly call SUVs a low end product. If all we buy is the low end then we would all be driving Yugos (like the free PC <gg>).
They think that bandwidth is not important. Really? Think video. Think voice recognition. And they won't need more bandwidth? Sorry but bandwidth needs are only going to INCREASE in the future.
Back to Dave's question. When the bear side can give me a REALISTIC answer to that question will be the day I stop supporting the Rambus solution. But I won't hold my breath. I think it will be a long time coming.
Regards,
Jim |
