Scumbria,
Allegedly DDRSDRAM is coming to a graphic card near you:
Wonder why no-ones talking about RDRAM for graphics cards.
This whole pin out thing is baloney now as well.
Folks are now doing staggered pads with 40-50 micron effective pad pitch.
So a $5 die can hold 400-500 pins no problemo-slap into a $5 PBGA and you have a killer chip!!!.
Regards,
Kash
DDR SDRAM will make debut in graphics arena
By Jack Robertson
Electronic Buyers' News
(06/02/99, 11:19:15 AM EDT)
Double-data-rate SDRAM will crack the PC market in graphics chipsets beginning this fall, a jump-start many memory-chip vendors believe will position DDR as a high-speed contender in other applications as well.
Micron, Hitachi, Samsung, and other companies are gearing up their DDR graphics programs months before the double-clocked interface is expected to arrive as main memory in desktop PCs and servers.
“Getting an early start as dedicated memory in graphics chipsets will definitely boost DDR,” said Jim Sogas, director of DRAM business operations at Hitachi Semiconductor (America) Inc., San Jose.
Samsung Electronics Inc., which is slated to ramp 128-Mbit chips supporting the Direct Rambus DRAM interface for PCs later this year, is already making its first DDR production shipments to several unidentified graphics vendors.
“Graphics-chipset vendors are always the first to jump on a new, faster DRAM,” said Avo Kanadjian, vice president of memory marketing at the San Jose company. “They were first to use EDO and the first to use SDRAM. They'll be the first to use DDR.”
Micron Technology Inc. and Infineon Technologies AG also are shipping DDR SDRAM samples to graphics-accelerator manufacturers in the hope that the sector will be the first to order production quantities of the devices.
Desi Rhoden, chairman of Advanced Memory International Inc., a coalition of suppliers that supports DDR, said early adoption by the graphics market could speed the memory's penetration elsewhere.
“It endorses and makes DDR more acceptable in other applications,” said Rhoden, who works in Tempe, Ariz. “DRAM companies also gain early experience in making the new chip, so it will enter the rest of the PC market as a mature product with no surprises.”
Some vendors within the DDR camp said a production ramp in the graphics sector could even position DDR ahead of its Direct RDRAM rival in the race for desktop-PC design-ins. Rambus Inc., which designed the Direct RDRAM interface and has received substantial support from Intel Corp., declined to comment.
Although vastly smaller than the PC market, the graphics arena stands to offer DDR a respectable incubation, according to observers. George Iwanyc, an analyst at Dataquest Inc., San Jose, estimated that graphics-chipset sales last year exceeded $1.6 billion-a 60% increase over 1997. And he expects similar growth this year.
In many ways, Iwanyc said, DDR is well suited as buffer memory in graphics chipsets, particularly because of its wide, 64-bit organization; high speed; and relatively low cost. According to Andreas von Zitzewitz, vice president of operations at Infineon in Munich, Germany, customers are already sampling DDR SDRAM with clock speeds of 300 and even 400 MHz.
As frame-buffer memory, DDR would also sidestep many of the timing and interface issues associated with main memory, because the frame buffer communicates directly with the graphics processor without the need for an intervening core-logic chipset.
This point-to-point connection gives graphics designers more flexibility, and makes it easier for memory companies to sell an assortment of DDR versions that may test out at various clock speeds, according to proponents. In fact, numerous oddball DDR chip speeds-from 275 to 311 MHz-are expected to show up in many graphics chipsets.
Moreover, graphics vendors are free to begin using DDR chips even before details of the so-called PC200 and PC266 DDR SDRAM main-memory specifications are finalized, proponents said.
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