kash,
I see intel still chasing a losing postion.
dailynews.yahoo.com
Otelinni doing a fine job. Give him a raise and more stock options.
steve
Monday February 28 06:00 PM EST
Outlook for Rambus not rosy
By Ken Popovich, PC Week
Memory technology, costly and in short supply, keeps OEMs in SDRAM camp
Despite Intel Corp.'s lobbying efforts and the more than $1 billion it has invested in memory chip makers to spur
adoption of Rambus technology, the memory architecture remains a minor player in the PC marketplace.
Analysts predict that over the next two years, RDRAM (Rambus dynamic RAM) will continue to be overshadowed by
SDRAM (synchronous DRAM), a less expensive and battle-tested memory technology (see chart, right).
That's a far cry from Intel's prediction two years ago that Rambus-based memory would
dominate the desktop market by the end of this year, said Mario Morales, an analyst at
International Data Corp., in Mountain View, Calif.
RDRAM will find its way onto only about 10 percent of the desktops shipped this year,
Morales said, with that figure rising to 18 percent to 20 percent next year.
The reason: Rambus technology has proved difficult and costly for DRAM manufacturers
to adopt, which, in turn, resulted in short supplies of RDRAM and kept its costs significantly
higher than SDRAM's.
"We really feel Rambus just isn't there yet," said Barlow Blake, executive director of visual
computing at workstation maker Intergraph Corp., in Huntsville, Ala. "There are too many
problems with latency, too many problems trying to populate memory-you can only get
about 1 to 2 gigabytes, tops."
Compounding the issue has been Intel's problems with its RDRAM-native 820 and 840
chip sets. This month, Intel admitted that memory errors can arise when the chip sets are
configured with SDRAM and error-correction code. The problem spurred Intel to scrap
plans for three server mother boards.
Last year, Intel had to delay the introduction of its 820 chip set more than three months due
to a slot configuration problem involving RDRAM.
"Rambus is very different than conventional memory and has proved very difficult to design with," said Mike Feibus,
an analyst at Mercury Research Inc., in Scottsdale, Ariz. "There are also the added costs."
DRAM makers must pay Rambus Inc. a licensing fee and retool their manufacturing operations to produce
Rambus-based memory chips and motherboards.
In today's market, RDRAM costs about 50 percent more than PC 133 SDRAM, and the product remains in short
supply.
Not surprisingly, Rambus officials said PC makers would be wise to adopt the technology now, despite the price
disadvantage.
"Competitive advantage carries a cost," said Avo Kanadjian, vice president of worldwide marketing for Rambus, in
Mountain View, Calif. "Those companies going through the transformation now [such as Dell Computer Corp.,
Compaq Computer Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co.] are going to reap the profits in terms of market share down the
road."
While Intel, of Santa Clara, Calif., is committed to Rambus, it's moving to address the market's continuing demand
for SDRAM.
"RDRAM plays the primary role in our road map, but we have SDRAM flexibility," said Intel spokesman Dan
Francisco. "You'll have PC 133 with the 815 [chip set] that will come out in the first half, so we are offering the same
options" as Intel's competitors, Francisco said. See this story in context on ZDNN's Page One Section. |
