Repost of Mike Magee article. I made a few errors in the previous post trying to edit out the transfer spaces.
212.113.5.84
Where the hell are... DDR chipsets?
By: Mike Magee
Posted: 11/06/2000 at 15:54 GMT
Computex 2000 Many a weary trek around the three Computex halls failed to
provide even one example of a motherboard based on double data rate (DDR)
memory, despite the noise and fury of that contingent this year and last.
So where are they? Even representatives of Via, which has pushed DDR like
there's no tomorrow, could only hold out tentative hopes of an Autumn launch,
which sounded to us more like October than September when we pressed them
the point.
Hats off, in this case, to Rambus. A day after we reported that top executive
Richard Crisp had been booted out of the DDR conference Via held on
Monday, he came and met us and talked his talk. This was a surreal situation,
not that that sort of situation fazes us here at Situation Publishing.
Crisp brought along another Rambus suit, and through the sort of Serendipity
that Computex produces, we found ourselves facing Dr Tom Pabst, of Tom's
Hardware, sandwiched between the two.
For some reason or other, The Register and Tom's Hardware are seen as being
anti-Rambus.
The other Rambus guy is a tri-athlete and was almost choked by the Hyatt
Cheers bar smoke, at one point rounding on Tom and saying: "Hey, you're a
doctor. Don't you know you're killing yourself?"
Be that as it may. The fact is there wasn't a single DDR chipset at the
Computex show and that speaks volumes for the committee-based attitude of
this open industry standard.
Perhaps Rambus has had a rough ride. Nevertheless, the fact remains, as one
acute industry observer said, if you pay extra money for them thar RIMMs, you
expect to get extra performance too.
So will Via produce chipsets that support Rambus? On that uestion, the boys
were curiously silent. They were even more silent about a quick future for
DDR chipsets though, and that is seriously ominous.
Particularly so, given that major Taiwanese memory supplier Mosel Vitelic said
early in the Computex week that DDR would displace SDRAM by the end of
this year... ©
Incidentally, Crisp insists he wasn't kicked out of the DDR forum. He may be
right. But the fact is his buddy, the bottom half of the Pabst sandwich, sat right
the way through it wearing his Rambus branded shirt. So Via's security engine
has a little way to go, despite the fact that chairman and CEO Wen Chi is an
ex-Intel employee
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