Thomas - Re: Samsung, SDRAM & RDRAM
That article sort of describes what is going on. Intel, a few months back, completed a study on DRAM technologies and concluded that EDO, Synchronous DRAM and a few others were not capable of providing data at a rate they forecast for their upcoming P7/Merced chip.
They concluded that RAMBUS technology could be scaled to provide about 1.6 Billion Bits/second (200 MHZ x 8 bits wide) throughput by the year 1999 or therabouts.
So, Intel engineers & Rambus Engineers went to Japan & Korea to present these findings and attempt to solicit support for RAMBUS (enhanced) DRAM architecture from the major memory suppliers - Toshiba, NEC, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Samsung, Huyundai, etc.
Apparently, Samsung now thinks they have a better idea.
I don't know how entrenched Intel is in specifying Rambus technology, but I would hope they would be pragmatic and accept alternative technologies.
The new chip sets required to support the P7/Merced need to interface to the main memory, and hence have to be designed to accept the timing parameters, burst clocks, setup conditions, etc. for a given DRAM technology.
How all this plays out will take time. Competition among DRAM suppliers is good, but high volumes of common parts is better - to keep prices low and availability high.
Basically, Intel will now be placed in the role of DRAM Design Referee!
Paul |
