Does Rambus have legs?
eetimes.com
By David Lammers
EE Times
(03/12/01, 10:02 a.m. EST)
Once again, Intel Fellow Peter
MacWilliams went to the Intel
Developer Forum with a strong
message of support for the
Rambus DRAM technology. And
once again, doubters lined up at
the microphones to challenge
Intel's decision.
Hand it to Intel for sticking to its guns. To an
extent, the success in the entry-level workstation
market has shown that Rambus technology works
on modules (the Nintendo and Sony game platforms
are short-channel implementations). The 840 chip
set supports a dual-channel Rambus implementation for workstations
with 1 to 2 Gbytes of memory.
But will that translate into a winning strategy for the desktop market,
where even a $200 premium is substantial these days?
Memory prices are volume-driven. If Rambus gets the upper hand in
volumes by riding on the Pentium 4 and Playstation 2, it may achieve
volume supremacy by this time next year. Double-data-rate DRAM has
support in the AMD and server camps, but those combined are smaller
than Intel's desktop space.
Dataquest research Fellow Martin Reynolds said DDR will be as tough a
critter to wrassle down as Rambus ever was. While DDR may be
manageable at the roughly 2-Gbyte/second bandwidth regime, "what
happens when processors move to 3 or 4 GHz?" he asked.
Trying to manage a 64-bit-wide memory bus, with all those pins, will
be hard, proving out the narrow 16-bit Rambus channel approach,
Reynolds said. "DDR runs the risk of gaining a bad reputation. In the
hands of companies in the commercial marketplace, it is dangerous
technology." Matching modules from different vendors with DDR chips
from other vendors, on a variety of motherboards, will prove as
troublesome as the glitches Intel faced over the past two years with
RDRAM.
On the other hand, Rambus Inc. is thoroughly hated by managers and
engineers at many companies. Reynolds said that its strategy of
asking for higher royalties from makers of DDR memories than from
makers of Rambus memories is seen as patent blackmail. "Rambus has
thoroughly soiled its bedding," said Reynolds.
Rambus president Dave Mooring insists that the industry eventually
will accept the Rambus business model.
I worry that neither RDRAM nor DDR will succeed. Getting the masses
to use high-bandwidth applications that need these memory
technologies, like videoconferencing or digital-photo editing, may take
a long time. |
