>>If you don't want to read the whole article, just read the conclusion.
great conclusion. i'll post it.
Conclusion
Rambus is a major technology transition and it will initially cost more than conventional SDRAM. This cost increase is driven by both the memory interface and the internal structure required to support higher data rates. However, with the bandwidth increases proposed for other system buses, it is important to improve memory bus performance to maintain system balance. Rambus offers the capability of scaling with the other system buses without another major technology transition.
As with any hardware improvement, Rambus benefits will be more apparent as software that can exploit its performance advantages becomes available. Dell believes this new memory technology is the best choice for the long term for many of its platforms. The restriction in memory capacity per channel will soon be alleviated as 256-Mb RDRAMs increase the per-channel capacity to over 1 GB. For the server and workstation market, 1-Gb RDRAMs are planned for 2002, bringing the memory capacity per channel to over 4 GB.
Because the narrower Rambus architecture is less costly to replicate than a wide memory bus, system boards with multiple Rambus channels should become more widely available in future designs.
As chip sets that support repeaters become available (planned for 2000), a single Rambus channel with two repeaters will be capable of supporting up to 64 RDRAMs. Chip sets that support multiple channels (also planned for 2000) will offer even greater memory capacity and will make access to the memory much faster. As vendors integrate Rambus components directly onto their microprocessor chips, users will see even more speed improvement.
Another limitation for the first generation of PCs with Rambus memory will be microprocessors with processor bus speeds that cannot take full advantage of Rambus' bus speed, and lack of application programs that exploit concurrency. Because of this, some business benchmarks may see little improvement. Preliminary data indicates that current memory/processor bandwidth restrictions seriously impact performance gains as processors reach core frequencies of 600 MHz and higher.
Streaming applications such as IP check sum and data compression will show improvements up to the full percentage improvement of the processor bus. For example, a move from a 100-MHz processor bus to a 133-MHz bus should yield close to a 33-percent improvement with this type of application program. As more application programs are written to take advantage of the additional bandwidth, and as Windows 2000 becomes more widely used, the benefits of Rambus memory will increase dramatically. Rambus will be an important technology for achieving peak performance from application programs introduced in 2000.
Dell believes that Rambus technology will offer a scalable solution for many of its desktop computers for the next several years.
dell.com |
