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To: LindyBill who wrote (5855)	9/2/1999 3:30:00 PM
From: MulhollandDrive	Respond to of 54805

Lindy, Intel has said they are ready to "push it" Intel supports PC133 SDRAM, but only until Rambus is ready A service of Semiconductor Business News, CMP Media Inc. Story posted 9 a.m. EST/6 a.m., PST, 9/2/99 By Jack Robertson PALM SPRINGS, Calif. -- Intel Corp. late Wednesday made it official: the company will add support to PC133 SDRAMs, citing the lack of rival Direct Rambus DRAM availability in the near future. Peter MacWilliams, an Intel fellow, said the endorsement of PC133 has no impact on the transition to Direct RDRAM. "As soon as Direct Rambus production ramps up, we expect to move rapidly to the new memory chip," he told the Intel Developers Forum. He said that Intel's evaluation of PC133 indicated that the SDRAM showed little performance increase over existing PC100 chips. "However, it will be widely available in the market and the higher speed essentially comes at no extra premium -- so why not use it?" he said. The Intel memory official said the market will ultimately determine how quickly the transition from PC133 to Direct Rambus will take place. "Intel strongly supports an early transition to Direct Rambus," he said. "However, there are market forces we don't control. We want to remain flexible to provide what the market wants." MacWilliams scotched early industry reports that Intel might develop a slightly different 133-MHz spec, but will adopt the already-approved industry PC133 standard. He cautioned, however, that Intel still will study whether any interface changes may be needed for the Intel chip set supporting PC133. He confirmed that Intel has dropped the hybrid S-RIMM modules that could either use Direct Rambus or SDRAM chips. Instead Intel will use the Memory Translator Hub (MTH) as a switch on the PC motherboard that can connect either Direct RDRAM RIMMs or SDRAM DIMMs. MacWilliams said no chip set has been identified yet to support PC133. However, he asserted the chip set selected will be solely for PC100/PC133 support and won't handle Direct Rambus. He said Intel has no plans now to add any support for Double Data Rate SDRAMs. "We've evaluated DDR several times for desktops, and each time decided not to support this memory," he said. However, Intel is seriously considering adding DDR support in its server chip sets, "based on what our OEMs are telling us," he added. Intel's DDR server interest may also be spurred by yesterday's announcement by Reliance Computer Corp. of San Jose that most major server OEMs have endorsed its independent DDR-SDRAM chip set (see Sept. 1 story). MacWilliams denied that Intel will be late to market with its PC133 chip set in the first half of 2000, despite several Taiwanese independents announcing PC133 chip sets will be delivered starting this fall. "Based on the volume ramp of [PCs using] PC133 memory next year, our [chip set] timing is about right." The Intel official said the roadmap change to add PC133 support wasn't due to any increased performance of the SDRAM chip. "Basically, it is lack of Direct RDRAM availability. We see PC133 as an interim memory co-existing with Direct Rambus through 2001," he said. Four memory producers will be in production on 128-megabit Direct RDRAMs in the third quarter of 1999. That will increase to five the fourth quarter and to eight suppliers in the first quarter of 2000. MacWilliams said the first production of 256-Mbit Direct Rambus chips is expected by two suppliers in the second quarter.