Intel Investors - Another article on Intel's Comdex RAMBUS Demo.
The reference to the 133 MHz Front Side Bus (FSB) for the chip set confirms that this WAS the Camino Chip Set being used.
Paul
{==========================================}
techweb.com
November 23, 1998, Issue: 1136
Section: News
Intel passes another milestone -- But still faces challenge to
move Direct RDRAM into mkt.
Andrew MacLellan
Las Vegas- Placing the next brick as it builds its new desktop-platform
strategy, Intel Corp. last week demonstrated a PC running with Direct
Rambus DRAM as main memory and a 133-MHz front-side bus.
Although the company admittedly has some "heavy lifting" ahead, Intel and its
partners said they have assembled all the components necessary to ensure that
Rambus and its constituent parts will be available for next year's PC market.
Intel did not identify other elements of its new, high-speed platform, but
top-of-the-line PCs in 1999 are expected to include a Katmai processor
running at above 500 MHz, as well as a version of the Camino chipset; both
of these are slated for introduction in the first half of next year.
Intel anticipates that Rambus-enabled systems will dominate the
$1,200-to-$3,500 PC market in 2000, and said it has also identified early
interest among OEMs looking to push the technology into the price-sensitive
sub-$1,000 territory.
"The thing we want to make clear today is that we've hit all of the milestones
that we discussed [two years ago]," said Peter MacWilliams, an Intel fellow
and the company's director of platform architecture, in an interview at
Comdex/Fall '98 last week. "We said we'd have a working PC platform by
the end of 1998, and we have that today."
Five DRAM makers will have 800-MHz Direct RDRAM chips in volume
production in the first quarter of 1999, with another couple of module makers
lending their support to provide Rambus in-line memory modules and
so-called Continuity modules, MacWilliams said. In addition, various chip and
component suppliers are readying Direct RDRAM clock generators,
connectors, and memory controllers.
"We have 100% capability for ramping up in January, and from a connector
point of view, we haven't heard of any problems-it's a drop-in replacement,"
said Alan Walse, director of strategic product development for the datacom
division of Molex Inc.'s computer business unit, Lisle, Ill.
The introduction of the high-speed Rambus interface has been regarded warily
by many DRAM makers, because of both its aggressive performance
improvement-which makes certain associated demands on the system-and the
fact that suppliers must pay a small royalty to the technology's creator,
Mountain View, Calif.-based Rambus Inc.
Direct RDRAM is much faster than the 100- to 133-MHz SDRAM used
today. But because it requires the simultaneous transition to 2.5-V power,
chip-scale packaging, new module types, a different motherboard slot
configuration, and other supporting technologies, a number of component
suppliers have been skeptical that the launch will proceed smoothly.
Rambus supporters, however, claim that each of these hurdles has been
addressed. In the area of chip test, for example, which presented suppliers
with one of their biggest challenges, Hewlett-Packard Co. has launched both
single- and dual-pass I/O testers to supplement vendors' existing phalanx of
DRAM-core test equipment.
"We've seen the orders, and everybody needs one or a few systems to begin
with," said Gaylord Erickson, product marketing manager for HP's California
Semiconductor Test division in Santa Clara, Calif. "I think the volume demand
is consistent with a ramp into the market."
Intel likened its Rambus efforts to last year's successful program that launched
PC-100 SDRAM technology. While early bugs occurred, PC-100 is now the
dominant main memory used in today's consumer PCs.
"PC-100 was a nightmare for a lot of people in the fourth quarter of 1997,"
MacWilliams said. "In reality, it was a bunch of minor incompatibility problems
that were all worked out."
Still, the company acknowledges that it has a six-month challenge ahead if it's
to move Rambus memory into the market in mid-1999 as planned. "There's a
lot of difference between prototyping and volume production," MacWilliams
said. "There's still a lot of work left to do between now and midyear."
Copyright ® 1998 CMP Media Inc.
|
