Hi dumbmoney; Re: "I have to give Rambus credit," Bannon said. "They showed us a paper spec 5 years ago and we bet the farm on it."
This may seem mysterious to Rambus morons who require bad news to be carefully spelled out for them. (If you don't spell it out for them, they assume it's good news. As evidence look at all the optimism they're getting from DDR becoming much cheaper than RDRAM. On the other hand, if you do spell it out for them, then they say that the author is biased.) Anyway, the next paragraph shows the consequences of betting the farm on Rambus:
"There's an old joke about a farmer who wins the lottery, and the press asks him what he's going to do with all the money" he said. "The farmer says, 'I guess I'll keep farming until I run out of money.' In fact, that's our motto. "We'll keep making microprocessors until we run out of money."
In other words, Compaq got sold a bill of goods, bet the farm on it, and lost money. Once they had spent a year working on an RDRAM solution they were tied to that memory type and couldn't change it as Mike Magee noted back in May: #reply-15807556 Compaq's Alpha project started well before the Camino fiasco put the final stake into the black heart of the Rambus vampire, as I noted on Feb 13, 2001: #reply-15347736 So at the time that Compaq started the project RDRAM seemed like a reasonable choice, but as the Compaq engineer implied, they were sold a bill of goods.
Time to collect up the traditional collection of Rambus morons' statements on what a great design win Compaq's Alpha was. The reason this is hilarious is that Compaq now implies that the reason they cancelled the project was precisely because of their stupid memory choice. I know you've been waiting for them, here they are:
Tinkershaw, who is regularly published with articles explaining what a great bargain RMBS is, here proves he doesn't know what he's talking about by failing to realize that when Compaq dropped the Alpha for the Itanium they were converting from a next generation design that used RDRAM to one that used SDRAM:
tinkershaw, June 29, 2001
...
But maybe a better question is why do Intel systems dominate corporate America, why does Dell only offer Intel, why has Compaq decided to scrap their Alpha chips and go with Intel, geez, I don't know. Maybe system quality.
... #reply-16013921
Dave B uses the Compaq Alpha as a counterexample to the fact of the death of RDRAM:
Dave B, May 17, 2001
...
However, as a counter example, I suppose, the Compaq Alpha chip is going to use RDRAM.
... #reply-15816792
This is in reply to my comment "That RDRAM is restritcted to a niche market is well known outside the little fantasy land you guys live in." #reply-15346520
blake_paterson, Feb 13, 2001
"The 833MHz Alpha is the first new Alpha chip since a 733MHz version was announced last year. Despite the one-year hiatus, more activity is coming. A 1GHz version of the 21264, originally due at the end of 1999, is being made in samples right now, said Shannon. "They are getting the chips in volume from IBM right now," he said. IBM serves as Compaq's manufacturer. News about the 21364, the successor to the 21264, should also begin to emerge, he said. The chip, which contains a Rambus controller, was originally slated for the middle of 2000." #reply-15347025
Rambus' management pumps the RDRAM based Alpha in a conference call:
January 31, 2001
" vii) CPQ Alpha will come out w/ RDRAM w/in one year and will be the “fastest and highest performing server in the market.” #reply-15275058
Jim kelley manages to use two cancelled processors as the reason that RDRAM is going to take over. In addition, MAJC was planned to use RDRAM not QRSL RDRAM:
jim kelley, January 8, 2001
"The QRSL RDRAM blows away any DDR this is why SUNW selected it for the MAJC chipset and also why CPQ selected it for their new ALPHA chipset." #reply-15144667 also see Scumbria's reply: #reply-15144974
Estephen quotes Adam Schwebel, (a stock pump) on why RMBS is such a great bargain just one year ago. Read the list of companies and try to guess how many of them either cancelled their RDRAM plans or added DDR:
"Since late 1999, Intel has enabled the use of
Direct RAMBUS in its Pentium III line of microprocessor-based systems. In addition, many networking companies (the likes of Vitesse, PMC Sierra, and Brocade) and other computer manufacturers (SUN Microsystems and Compaq ALPHA) have designed RAMBUS technology in their future products, however, very few are currently shipping."
Intel cancelled their future RDRAM plans, as has been widely reported in the trade press the past week.
Vitesse still has RDRAM, but no DDR, at least as far as I know, but they're not talking much about it. All their website shows in a search for "RDRAM" or "Rambus" is test equipment chips, no RDRAM usage here:
1. Timing and Logic: Octal Vernier, VSC6048
2. Test and Measurement: Fan-out Deskew, VSC6250
3. Test and Measurement: Octal Vernier, VSC6048
PMC-Sierra is in full support of DDR, and appears to have cancelled their RDRAM support: #reply-15934529 and #reply-16016483 .
Sun quietly canned the MAJC, which was to use RDRAM. And they've publicly announced that they will use DDR for new processors, calling DDR the "mainstream" memory: #reply-16513088 and #reply-16445739
And Compaq cancelled the Alpha, and now one of their engineers implies that the cancellation was due to the Rambus memory choice "bet".
Pompsander pumps the bus:
pompsander, Aug 20, 2001
"What is all this about Compaq getting some big government contract to build the next supercomputer? Using Alpha chips? With RDRAM interface? ... Was Alpha also dead, dead, dead?" #reply-14245359
Jdaasoc pumps the bus:
jdaasoc, Aug 20, 2000
"'a computer with thousands of Alpha processors' All with RDRAM interfaces no doubt." #reply-14245075
-- Carl |
