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

To: John Stichnoth who wrote (31919)	10/10/1999 12:23:00 PM
From: grok	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

RE: <I thought one of the possible "improvements" to rdram down the road, and one reason it has a brighter future than sdram, is that the interface might be widened in future generations. If doubled at 800 mhz, you'd get double the throughput. (Yes, you'd have more pins, but still not as many as sdram).> It is possible that Rambus could come up with the brilliant idea of widening the bus. (I'm trying to keep sarcasm to a minimum here.) Seriously it is likely that all memory types would evolve toward the same atandard eventually if they are allowed to. Eventually some things will be shown to be good ideas and some things bad ideas. I think that for PCs narrowing down to only 16 bits will be shown to be a really bad idea. But for Games or some Graphics it will be shown as a good idea. Also, something that no one on this thread ever talks about is that the Sdram/DDR/DDR-II evolution can evolve their data rate and match Rambus. Someday they will probably be pumping data at 800 MHz. But it will be easier since only 1/4 of the drams hang on each trace and, maybe, it will be only one dram at that rate. And they will go wider also. I wouldn't be surprised if within 10 years or sooner, PC memory is 256 bits wide pumping at 800 MHz. But they'll get there in steps with each step a smaller progression from the previous step. Some steps will be shown to be bad ideas and they die with little disruption to the industry. Maybe Rambus will try this approach if they fail in a big sudden way. Then they might have Rambus-II as 32 bits wide at 400 MHz. RE: <My understanding was that the bus was kept narrow at this time to make it easier to deal with and manufacture in the first generation chips? How am I misinterpreting that? Best, JS> Why would narrowing the bus make it "easier to deal with and manufacture in the first generation chips?" PCs have had 64-bit buses all the way back to the 486. People have been dealing with those pins for a long time and the wider bus makes the frequencies lower and that is easier to deal with and manufacture. 16 bits and 800 MHz just has very small advantages and big disadvantages in a PC.