Hi all; Re RMAbus. The motherboard return. While looking for the quote I used above where I stated that I wouldn't mind an RDRAM based computer, I found some posts I made at the time of the late September Camino fiasco that are appropriate to the current situation. (Forgive the grammar errors, it is difficult for me to proof while laughing.)
This is what I wrote 3 weeks before the Camino crisis hit the fan:
September 7, 1999
I forgot just how far off the scale this technology goes. This is not going to be pretty.
...
Seeing this, I have to say that the rambus technology is pretty much doomed to have massive problems in yield and production, and probably problems in the field as well. I doubt that you will ever see rambus chips within 20% in cost to either PC133 or DDR. This will turn out to be one hell of an expensive blunder. #reply-11173315
From just after the halt, this post takes on new significance, given that it turns out that DELL has been shipping huge numbers of PC600 i820 boards in the Dimension B family. It also has something to say about the consequences of Intel having to eat those motherboards.
September 28, 1999
It is a fact that more of the electronics industry is structured the way it is in order to simplify the task of deciding who has to eat scrapped product. In fact, the consequences of bad design are always forced back on the designers' company, in gate array design. I had done several chips before I detected this fact, but it is evident in the sequence of steps foundrymakes you go through before they put your design to fab. (For instance LSI Logic.) The Rambus business model allows themselves a certain distance from the fray.
Basically, they can (and did) spec a bus with so little margin for deviations [See #reply-11373384 and links for S/H calcs.] that it just can't work reliably, but they don't get hit with anything other than a stock drop and lost future revenues. If I were the box makers, I would be beyond furious, as they are the ones that are eating product. I don't expect to see a lot of box makers formally dump RDRAM, but I will be surprised to see a lot of them announce products with it in the future.
My own speculation, regards the design problem, is that they just plain ran out of timing margin, as a combination of a lot of parts not quite running to simulation. I expect them to take up underclocking, like they did with the PC100, as a solution. The PC100 ended up underclocked by something like 20%, so you are likely to see RDRAM running at 600MHz, maybe even 700 by the end of the year, but not likely production 800 MHz stuff. #reply-11380505
That was in response to this subtle and important post:
"Comments and questions: Recent problem shows flaw in business model that does not allocate significant expense to service licensees." #reply-11380448
Now there has been a lot of material get eaten by a lot of companies due to Rambus' excessively tight margins. And Rambus didn't have to pay a dime for what was their lack of engineering judgement. But it all comes back to what design engineers think of Rambus, and it is not a pretty thing for the future of that company.
-- Carl
P.S. Also these gems:
Jurassic park and testing stuff into working condition: #reply-11371551
Blood, mucus and feces: #reply-11364213 |
