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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (88200)	9/13/1999 2:30:00 PM
From: Rob Young	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

<By the way, one big weakness of a 4-way 21364 system is going to be memory capacity. There are only 16 RDRAM channels in such a system, meaning that with 128 MBit DRDRAM technology, you can only get a half gig per channel, or 8 gigabytes total. That limit will double as 256 MBit DRDRAMs become more common, but that's still not big enough for a 64-bit memory bandwidth monster. Compaq may have to resort to branch channels, which increase latency somewhat, or they may have to use SDRAM-to-RDRAM converters, which also impact performance.> Not a "weakness", a feature. Tell me how hard a 4-CPU Merced or a McKinley is going to work 64 Gigabytes of SDRAM OR RDRAM? If the CPU is limited to 2..8 Gigabyte/second what good does it do to have 100 or 200 Gig/sec bandwidth capacity? Okay.. the argument then shifts to it "can address more space and has that available". Sure, but maybe it is all about design centers. Need more memory? You most likely need more CPU. A 4-CPU system hits a certain segment. A 64 Gigabyte 4-CPU system doesn't make sense for several reasons, the least of which it has 1-$1.8 million (1 to 1.8 million looking at 4 Gig boards commodity prices TODAY 1.8 and tomorrow 1 million MAYBE) dollars worth of memory in a $100,000 box. More common high-end would be a 32 processor WildFire with 128 Gigabytes of memory. That's your high-end. Besides, with 64 Gig as your needs, maybe you take 4 - 4 CPU boxes and cluster them using Memory Channel III if you like seperate boxes for redundancy. OR even more likely is you purchase a 16 CPU WildFire config with 64 Gig of memory as it has multiple hardware redundancy built in and a much faster/wider interconnect with the Global Switch. Don't need all that CPU horsepower but need the memory capacity? Okay.. maybe you have me there and a doubling of the bits will make up for that. More likely scenario though is as I described above. The 4 CPU / 64 Gigabyte box isn't really a big deal.. marketing. 4 CPU / 64 Gig box will require a reduction in memory costs by about 90% to become a big seller. i.e. another generation and doubling of bits. Finally: The 4 CPU / 4 Memory board is a sweet spot in my opinion as it matches up nicely with bandwidth capacity and also aligns with the 21364 .. a CPU controls the adjacent memory bank and the CPU itself acts as a network switch. Rob