Skeeter. Since the semi companies can not figure out which
Dram to produce, I have to ask the expert ! Skeeter, which one
will win ? RDRAM,SLDRAM or DDR SDRAM ? (g)
A service of Semiconductor Business News, CMP Media Inc.
Story posted at 10 a.m. EDT/7 a.m. PDT, 9/18/97
Via's chip set supports fast SDRAM spec
TAIPEI, TAIWAN -- Via Technologies Inc. here today became the first PC chip set maker to announce support for the emerging double-data-rate synchronous DRAM (DDR SDRAM) standard.
Via has begun sampling a chip set with a DDR SDRAM-based memory interface, according to Wen Chi Chen, president of the Fremont, Calif.-based company. This logic core product line, which is actually a new version of its current Apollo VP3 chip set, will move into volume production by this October, Chen said.
``This is the first chipset on the market to support double-data-rate DRAMs,'' he said. ``(DDR SDRAMs) will run twice as fast as the current SDRAMs on the market.''
The DDR SDRAMs will be critical for the emerging accelerated graphics port (AGP) standard. ``New technologies like AGP are driving the transition from PC as a computing engine, to the PC as a multimedia platform,'' Chen added.
Supporting Via's new chip set is South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., which apparently has a DDR SDRAM product that supports 1,066-megabyte/s (1.066-Gbyte/s) transfer rates at 66-MHz bus speeds. Current SDRAMs on the market support 533-megabyte transfer rates.
The DDR SDRAMs will enable operation speeds beyond the 100-MHz limit of a SDRAM, Via officials added. The DDR SDRAMs will eventually be available at speeds up to 250-MHz, with transfer rates up to 2.4-Gbytes/s, they added.
The DDR SDRAM movement faces some challenges, however. Despite the performance boosts, Intel Corp. has not come out to support the technology. Intel, the world's largest chipset maker, is currently pushing the market towards standard, 100-MHz SDRAM devices for its Pentium-level processors and core logic devices.
In 1999, Intel will shift directly to Rambus Inc.'s latest high-speed memory interface architecture, dubbed Direct Rambus (dRDRAM). Scheduled to be introduced mid-October and shipped in late 1998 or so, the dRDRAM technology provides 1.6-Gbytes/s transfer rates.
Another high-speed memory architecture, dubbed SLDRAM, is somewhat like DDR SDRAM. Intel will not support the SLDRAM technology, nor will Via.
The price for the DDR SDRAM-based chipset from Via is $39.00, in 1,000-unit lots. It comes in a 472-pin BGA package. |
