November 23, 1998, Issue: 818
Section: News
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Direct Rambus to hit in mid-1999
Amber Howle
Irvine, Calif. -- Resellers can expect to begin offering systems containing Direct Rambus memory by mid-1999.
Within the past few weeks, some memory vendors have started in-house testing and at least one company is shipping samples to OEMs.
Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc., Irvine, Calif., now is supplying Direct Rambus RIMM modules to Austin, Texas-based Dell Computer Corp. Toshiba formed a manufacturing partnership with Kingston Technology Co. to deliver Rambus RIMMs to PC OEMs planning to release next year's systems using the new memory architecture.
"[Kingston] is also building prototypes for semiconductor OEMs," said Al Soni, vice president and general manager of services at Kingston, Fountain Valley, Calif. "At this point, it is in the initial engineering phase."
For its part, Siemens Corp.'s Semiconductor Group, Cupertino, Calif., ended the engineering phase of its 72-Mbit Direct Rambus DRAM (RDRAM) silicon. Siemens said the die size helps make the chip the smallest 72-Mbit Direct RDRAM part in the market.
The chips are being tested now, with engineering samples expected to ship to PC OEMs by the end of the year, said Siemens executives.
Meanwhile, Samsung Semiconductor Inc., San Jose, Calif., expects to soon ship to OEMs samples of its 144-Mbit RDRAM chip and 144-Mbyte Rambus In-line Memory Module. The chips are twice as fast as the 72-Mbit chip Samsung released in July, and can process data up to 1.6 Gbytes per second, said Avo Kanadjian, vice president of memory marketing for Samsung.
Vendors and analysts earlier this year predicted resellers would get their hands on Direct Rambus memory during the second half of next year. Still, supply may not be able to meet market interest, said Sherry Garber, senior vice president at Semico Research Corp., Phoenix.
"Despite all the gearing up, we believe there will be a tremendous shortfall [of Direct RDRAM]," Garber said. "To get from engineering samples to production takes a few months. We think there will be about 33 million Direct RDRAM parts available next year, with a need somewhere in the range of 170 [million] to 200 million to meet demand."
Copyright ® 1998 CMP Media Inc.
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