the manner of reporting this cracks me up. the nature of news is controversy meaning these guys just can't give a positive slant to any story no matter how wonderful.
just a few months ago none of us thought rdram would ever make it to portables...too much heat, drained batteries etc. then we thought, well these problems may get worked out in a few years. now we get into laptops next year. as good as that news is, they present the story as negatively as possible.
Rambus setting sights on notebook market -- But Intel's DRDRAM delay may push out volume adoption to 2000
Andrew MacLellan
Silicon Valley- Rambus Inc. is gearing up its new high-speed memory interface for the notebook PC, betting that success in the desktop computing space will win it converts in other markets.
With several power features suiting it specifically to the portable environment, Direct Rambus DRAM may show promise, provided it can sidestep the impedance and thermal issues that surfaced during its integration into the desktop PC, observers said.
Intel Corp.'s confirmation last month that it is delaying chipset support for Direct RDRAM until late in the third quarter will likely push out Rambus' volume adoption into mobile platforms to the second half of next year, according to Sherry Garber, an analyst with Semico Research Corp., Phoenix. Still, if Direct RDRAM is to become the market's dominant memory architecture, it must score successes within this arena, she added.
"The notebook market has the highest growth" of any computer segment, she said. "Not the biggest volume necessarily, but the highest growth; and it's important for Rambus to get into this market if it wants to be a major DRAM supplier."
Much of the debate surrounding which DRAM technology will drive tomorrow's platforms has centered around desktop PCs, which are typically the first to adopt new technology. However, as witnessed by Intel's converging desktop and notebook roadmaps, portable designs no longer necessarily trail their desk-bound brethren.
"The RDRAM is an important element in closing the performance gap between desktop and mobile systems," said Daniel Lenehan, director of architecture for Intel's Mobile and Handheld Products Group, in a statement.
Hoping to capitalize on the mobile market, Rambus, Mountain View, Calif., has built into its interface a special low-power mode as well as compliance with Intel's Mobile 2000 power guidelines. And the company's Direct RDRAM delivers twice the performance of a standard PC100 SDRAM while consuming less power, according to Subodh Toprani, vice president and general manager of Rambus' Logic Products Division.
In addition to active, standby, and power-down modes, Direct RDRAM features a "nap" mode. A memory subsystem in standby mode typically consumes 175 mW, mostly to maintain power to the delay-lock-loop (DLL), Toprani said. In power-down mode, this feature is turned off, dropping power consumption to just 3.5 mW. However, when the PC is reactivated, it can take as long as 10 ms to turn the DLL back on.
Rambus said its nap mode, by comparison, consumes a modest 11 mW to keep the DLL in a ready state that requires just 50 ns to power up. By deciding how many chips in the memory subsystem can exercise the nap-mode feature, designers can optimize battery life by saving up to a quarter-watt per system, according to Toprani.
Additionally, Rambus said Direct RDRAM uses less power when operating in either a distributed or localized fashion. In a 64-Mbyte system, Direct RDRAM executing a distributed workload across all four DRAMs in the system consumes just 2.4 W while delivering bandwidth of 1.6 Mbytes/s. A similar scenario using PC100 SDRAM would eat up 3.2 W of power while achieving a bandwidth of just 800 Mbytes/s, Toprani claimed.
To support its customers' mobile-PC needs, Rambus' licensees are readying SO-RIMM modules and connectors, as well as an SO version of the so-called Continuity module, which is required to complete the circuit in sockets not populated by RIMMs.
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