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

To: Don Green who wrote (36696)	1/20/2000 6:38:00 PM
From: Don Green	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

DRAM consortium to consider next-generation Rambus By Anthony Cataldo EE Times (01/20/00, 10:14 a.m. EST) TOKYO ? Don't count Rambus out yet. Though Intel Corp. and five major DRAM makers recently announced their intent to hammer out a new high-speed DRAM architecture that will hit the market in 2003, the group hasn't ruled out any architecture or interface scheme, including the next generation of Direct RDRAM, which will run at 1.6-GHz. "System performance is continuously improving, and to meet the requirement it is necessary to develop a new DRAM that will offer better performance than the current Direct RDRAM," said Hidemori Inukai, assistant general manager for the memory division at NEC Corp. "The enhanced DRDRAM is one of the candidates. It needs to be discussed more while considering system applications like main memory or graphics buffer." The current Direct RDRAM technology developed by Rambus Inc., in conjunction with Intel, has proved formidable to implement, causing component and system delays that have forced Intel to consider back-up plans due to RDRAMs' low yields and high test and packaging costs. DRAM vendors have complained of the heavy development costs and numerous product revisions. The industry will take a new tact with the next main memory, though Inukai denied the group was formed out of any discontent over Rambus. Beginning last October, Intel, Hyundai Electronics, Infineon Technologies, Micron Technology Inc., NEC and Samsung Electronics started discussing the need to pin down a next-generation memory. Rather than have Intel and Rambus dictate the direction, they decided to form a kind of open standard consortium to solicit feedback from other industry players. Once the group decides on a technology, each DRAM company will be responsible for developing it on its own. What's more, no licensing or royalty fees are being considered, Inukai said, in contrast to builders of RDRAMs, which must pay licensing and royalty fees to Rambus. Next-generation candidates A number of memory candidates could fit the bill. Among the spate of DRAM technologies that were proposed over the last several years since Rambus' ascent are the Double-Data Rate 2 open standard; Fast Cycle RAM from Fujitsu; Virtual Channel Memory (VCM) from NEC; and Enhanced DRAM from Ramtron subsidiary Enhanced Memory Systems Inc. Some companies also have tried and failed to rouse interest in an open Rambus-like fast interface scheme known as SyncLink. Inukai confirmed that Virtual Channel DRAM will be one of the candidates under consideration. NEC has licensed VCM to other manufacturers without charge, and has signed Siemens and Hyundai as second sources. The architecture has garnered the support of Taiwan's chip set makers, and recently Micron Electronics said it would use VCM in a line of PCs. Whatever scheme is ultimately chosen, it must have higher bandwidth and lower latency compared to today's Direct Rambus if it is to meet 1-GHz and greater processor frequencies, Inukai said. In its favor, Rambus has proven performance and momentum. Despite its flaws, Direct RDRAM has a 800-Mbyte/second peak bandwidth per chip, which makes it the fastest commercial DRAM. The next version of Rambus memory, which will be considered by the DRAM group and which Rambus promises will appear in the second half of the year, will double the bandwidth at the chip level to 1.6 Gbytes/s. At the module level, Rambus is promising a quadrupling of bandwidth, to 6.4 Gbytes/s. What's more, the industry has already made a huge investment in Rambus. When the cost of developing Rambus was recognized, Intel paid hundreds of millions of dollars to companies such as Micron and Samsung to help pay for the cost. And memory vendors themselves have spent hundreds of millions on refining their process technology and new testers in preparations for RDRAM's market introduction. And though it has been delayed several times, the Rambus parts are coming. Toshiba Corp., for one, said it will have to make one-million Direct Rambus DRAMs to meet the March introduction of Sony's Playstation II. And Toshiba started production of Direct Rambus for use in PCs earlier this month, a spokesman said.