ST,
It's been my opinion that by pricing themself out of reach and failing to build industry-wide support for their technology, Rambus lost at least two years.
You do understand that they don't actually build anything, and therefore don't actually set any prices, right? Also, I'm sure you understand that the way they approached the industry-wide support issue was to get Intel to decide back in 1997 that they would be the next memory standard supported by their processors. Intel selected them over SLDRAM and DDR. They certainly have not handled their relationships with the rest of the industry very well (except, maybe for Samsung), but as opposed to being two years late they're actually way ahead of DDR and SLDRAM (which never saw the light of day) in terms of success in the PC main memory space. Without Intel's support, why would anyone have made RDRAM at all? And until Intel made a chipset that supported RDRAM (introduced 16 months ago) how could they've have moved any faster? Chipset support for DDR didn't even come out until barely 6 months ago. So there is no "lost time".
Since I'm sure you've read the posts with articles from the last couple of days, then you also know that not only are almost all systems vendors shipping P4 systems, but P4-based mobos appear to be outselling DDR mobos, based on reports in several articles out of Asia.
The next interesting inflection point will be when Intel introduces Brookdale. There are competing reports that indicate that DDR support in Brookdale will follow shortly thereafter, and there are reports that indicate that Intel is not excited about DDR (especially if the 4i initiative can get some traction). Via has been promising a DDR chipset for a year or two but still has nothing to show for it. Once they introduce their chipset, that may also help goose the DDR efforts, as long as it works well.
Right now, DDR as a replacement for SDRAM as PC main memory is floundering. And it's the only current viable option as an alternative for RDRAM as the replacement for SDRAM. So the final question to be answered is how quickly SDRAM transitions to either alternative. I tend to agree with Gene that SDRAM will be around for quite a while. It's certainly going to continue to be an interesting horserace. |
