Steve,
Of course, anybody with an 820 system who upgrades to a P4 will be throwing their RIMMS away and buying new ones?
Why would anyone upgrade 820 based system? It is barely 6 months old. A more typical upgrade cycle is 2 to 3 years, even longer. Paying 300% premium for memory now, hoping that you will be able to take advantage of it is not a very good idea. Memory types and interfaces improve. If Rambus still exists 2 or 3 years from now, I am sure they will have a better, faster solution, compared to your 3 years old RIMM, which will probably prevent you from even adding your old RIMM. So in effect, you probably will be throwing away your old RIMMS. Or a better idea: donate your complete older system to a poor relative or charity.
The "hype" of last year positioned RDRAM systems at the high end, with promise of it moving into mainstream as prices of RDRAM come down, and systems containing Timna and Willamette appear.
That has been the promise of RDRAM, not RDRAM systems. I have nothing against promise. Buying RDRAM based system is something else, that takes place in real world, using real dollars, or more precisely wasting real dollars today for nothing.
There is nothing wrong with RMBS longs hyping the promise of RDRAM, but I (and surely you) have to laugh at the idiots at whose expense this promise will be realized.
Of course the real high end of that arena wasn't tested. That would have involved Tom putting 2 P3's in his OR840 and running a benchmark.
There may be some applications that benefit from dual processors, but I think you would be unpleasantly surprised by seeing the results of standard benchmarks. Most of the common applications are not well written. Few take advantage of multithreaded approach.
Joe |
