Rambus (RMBS) - Eagle or Penguin Message Board

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Technology Stocks : Rambus (RMBS) - Eagle or Penguin

RMBS 94.23

-11.1%

Dec 12 9:30 AM EST

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To: Dan3 who wrote (27399)	8/23/1999 5:07:00 AM
From: John Walliker	Read Replies (1) of 93625

Dan3, A lower pin count has no intrinsic value. While the lower pin count makes laying out the motherboard easier, and provides a benefit if it allows better component placement, rambus has more stringent location requirements for the memory traces, so even that may end up no better than a wash. If a large pincount is used space has to be found round the edges of the die for the bonding pads. This then limits the smallest die size that can be achieved, regardless of reduced feature size. If a large pincount is used, ground-bounce becomes an increasing problem which can only be overcome by adding yet more ground pins or by slowing the rate of change of drive current (which slows the interface down) or using differential signalling (which adds yet more pins). (Groundbounce is the phenomenon where many simultaneously switching outputs cause a large transient current to flow through the ground pins of the package. Their inductance causes a transient voltage change which can disturb the detection of other signals or the internal operation of the device. If the data streaming ability of rambus ever looks like it's of any use in a PC, we'll return to interlaced memory, the way all of the old 486s were before cache became universal and streaming data was determined to not be worth the $10 a couple of extra memory sockets added to the cost of a motherboard. But this will require using a second memory controller because the settling time of the bus is already a large part of the available time between memory accesses. In the days of the 486 memory access times were around 80ns, leaving lots of time to interleave memory banks onto one bus. Even if it were possible it would also increase the granularity problem. John

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