Oct 29, 2000
Intel-Rambus split widens
Road map indicates chip giant is phasing out Direct RDRAM from
most of its platforms
By Jack Robertson
Electronic Buyers' News
(10/27/00, 04:11:44 PM EST)
A confidential road map obtained by EBN shows Intel Corp. dropping Direct
Rambus DRAM from every computing platform but high-end workstations by
mid-2001. This would appear to bear out recent comments by Intel president
Craig Barrett that the exclusive deal to support the memory interface was “a
mistake.”
According to the document, Intel will phase out the slow-selling Direct
RDRAM-enabled 820 chipset in the first quarter of next year, while the
yet-to-be-introduced Intel 850 chipset will be dropped in the middle of the third
quarter.
At that time, Intel's sole remaining Rambus chipset will be an enhanced 850
device code-named Tehama-E, which the company is rolling out for workstations
and PCs costing more than $2,000.
The details of the road map are further evidence that the rupture between Intel
and memory-design partner Rambus Inc. has widened, even to the point where
Intel is planning to introduce a double-data-rate SDRAM-enabled chipset for
desktop PCs. Industry sources said the companies are engaged in negotiations
over Intel's demand that a clause barring it from fielding its own DDR chipset until
2003 be stricken from its licensing contract with Rambus.
Intel representatives declined to comment on either the talks or the road map,
citing a policy against discussing unannounced products.
However, several DRAM and memory-module suppliers with knowledge of the
company's development plans said Intel is designing its own DDR chipset, and, as
previously reported by EBN, has bought a store of unbuffered DIMMS for testing
and validation purposes.
Industry sources believe the chipsets, known as Almador and Brookdale, will be
introduced in the middle of next year and will have both single-data-rate and
DDR capability. Intel will time the activation of the DDR function according to
market conditions, the sources said.
Intel's own chipset road map showed the Brookdale replacing the 850/Rambus
chipset next year for high-end “Mainstream 3” PCs in the $1,500 to $2,000 price
range.
Brookdale supports a mainstream desktop Pentium 4, code-named Northwood,
which is expected to debut in the second quarter of next year.
The Almador chipset, which supports a 1.3-GHz Pentium III shrink code-named
Tualatin, will appear at the end of the second quarter. Initially aimed at PCs in
the $1,300 to $1,700 range, Tualatin will be shifted to the $1,100 to $1,400
space late in the third quarter of 2001.
Its contractual issues with Rambus aside, when Intel chooses to activate the DDR
capability of its chipsets, it will be more than six months behind rival Advanced
Micro Devices Inc., which this week will introduce the 760 DDR chipset and
upgraded 266-MHz processor bus to support its highest-performance Athlon
processors.
Meanwhile, third-party chipset vendors, including Acer Laboratories, Micron
Technology, and Via Technologies, already have introduced their own
DDR-enabled logic controllers for the Athlon.
The same third-party manufacturers have unveiled DDR chipsets for the Pentium
III, which should help Intel make up for the fact that it has yet to field a similar
chipset of its own.
In fact, Via and Acer have said they will supply DDR chipsets for the Pentium 4,
and were said to be seeking Intel's approval in meetings last week with Barrett in
Taiwan.
Earlier this year, Intel approached Micron about the possibility of licensing that
company's DDR-equipped Samurai chipset technology, a source close to Micron
said. However, the memory-chip maker declined to give Intel an exclusive license
because it also wanted to use the Samurai to support the Athlon, according to the
source. |
