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Technology Stocks : Rambus (RMBS) - Eagle or Penguin -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (28828)	9/6/1999 11:34:00 PM
From: grok	Respond to of 93625

RE: <KZNerd has postulated that if Rambus "reformulates" the RDRAM design to have fewer banks, then current versions of chips and controllers will be incompatible with the "New and Improved" version. Let me find out tomorrow. I don't know if the Rambus protocol is flexible enough to accomodate the "reformulated" version. I think it should be, though I'm not certain. Tenchusatsu> Tench, Doesn't the controller on the chip set (or processor in the case of Timna) keep track of which banks are open so that it can issue "CAS accesses" (wrong name but I can't look up the right name because Rambus made their tech data password protected) to open banks? So the controller has to know how many banks there are. I expect that there is some programmability to this so that controllers can adjust to newer and denser memories with more banks. Well, maybe there is enough programmability to adjust to fewer banks as well. In any case I supposed people in the Chip Set area have been looking into this since IDF so I don't expect that it'll take long to find your answer.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (28828)	9/6/1999 11:35:00 PM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Re:I don't know if the Rambus protocol is flexible enough.. eetimes.com MacWilliams said the forum may come up with one or more commonly accepted RDRAM designs with fewer memory banks, which would then be supported by iterations of the Intel chip sets. One suggestion is to trim the number of memory banks per chip to a single set of 16 dependent banks; another calls for four independent banks. The final decision "is up to each vendor, and over time Intel would build chip sets that would support different approaches," he said. ======================================================= Doesn't mean it can't be done. Someone, I think it was SIS, had a chipset that supported 30 pin FPM and 72 pin EDO at one pont. I don't believe that both banks could be used at the same time though. Dan