Dan,
The man is far more qualified to discuss these issues than almost anyone but a DRAM designer, and all of them are biased either for or against Rambus depending upon whom they work for.
You are way too far out on the proverbial limb here. Here's what he was quoted as saying in the article:
"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."
To begin with, he has no idea what mobo designers are saying about the actual performance of their newest mobos with Intel's i820 chip set and RDRAM because nothing has been published yet. By anyone.
Secondly, how does he know that the performance increase is almost nothing since, again, nothing has been published?
So he's making completely unsupported statements based on no facts whatsoever (certainly none that he cites).
Here's his web page/CV:
phyvax.physics.miami.edu:8001/chris/$root.html
Here's his list of publications:
G. C. Boynton and U. Torkelson, ``Dissipation of nonlinear Alfven waves', Astronomy & Astrophysics, accepted
S. Poedts and G. C. Boynton, ``Nonlinear Magnetohydrodynamics of Footpoint Driven Coronal Loop', Astronomy & Astrophysics, 306, 610-620, (1996)
G. C. Boynton , and M. A. Huerta, ``Secondary Arcs in 2-D MHD Numerical Simulations of EML Plasma Armatures,' IEEE Trans. Mag., Vol. 31, (January
1995)
Please point out for me what makes him "more qualified to discuss these issues than almost anyone but a DRAM designer". His work on magnetohydrodynamics? Alfven waves?
As far as I, or anyone else, can tell, he's just another user of powerful computing systems, which doesn't qualify him as any kind of expert on what's under the hood. You have no idea if he's qualified or not. He may be, but you don't know that from any evidence we have. Unless you're trying to claim that just because someone has a degree in Physics, they're a qualified expert on every subject in physics. In that case, let's just get Stephen Hawking to tell us what the best memory type would be for PCs.
Stop trying to deify him until we have some evidence of whether he's worth deifying. Until that day, pompsander's comments about his qualifications are much closer to the given evidence than yours are.
Dave |
