Re: Weak, Dan3, very weak
Ok, here's something a little stronger, courtesy of James Fulop who posted the link to:
zdnet.com
On a more technical note, Chris Boynton, from the University of Miami's physics department, chided me for buying into the hype about RDRAM memory performance. Boynton says that he's one of those rare people who can use every available compute cycle and more and has applications that run for hours, even days. He writes:
"Look around and I think you'll find that even though Rambus DRAM has a much higher bandwidth, there are elements of the design that prevent seeing the benefits of that bandwidth. Look at what motherboard designers are saying about the actual performance of their newest motherboards with Intel's i820 chip set and RDRAM. Besides the fact that RDRAM is much more expensive, the performance increase is almost nothing."
Boynton's point is well-taken. RDRAM, also known as DRDRAM, is a protocol-based design that intermixes data and addresses on a single bus. The bus is faster, but it incurs higher overhead and is limited somewhat by its narrow width. The higher speeds also make board layout more critical. But the biggest knock against RDRAM is that it's a proprietary design, requiring a royalty payment to Intel and Rambus.
Another protocol-based RAM design, SLDRAM (synchronous-link DRAM), is available as a royalty-free open standard. SLDRAM can operate at up to 400MHz today and may go faster in the future.
Boynton's money, however, is ondouble-data-rate SDRAM (synchronous DRAM), which you may see as DSDRAM (double-speed DRAM) or DDRDRAM:
"Double-data-rate SDRAM with a 133MHz memory bus would be a far better solution at the moment. I only hope Intel stops foisting RDRAM on us before we can benefit from it, and supports DSDRAM as soon as possible."
On cost issues alone, he makes a valid point. Manufacturability and the ability to use current RAM and board layout technology are also big pluses. c
Bill Machrone is vice president of technology for Ziff-Davis. He can be reached at bill_machrone@zd.com. |
