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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SunSpot who wrote (39206)	3/10/2000 11:11:00 AM
From: Valley Girl	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Lars (OT): Spoken like a true momentum investor! Well, it still seems to be working for you. But don't look too carefully under the hood of RDRAM, you might not like what you see. I'm no engineer, but what I've read suggests that RDRAM is an expensive flop. SDRAM transfers up to 64 bits in parallel at front-side bus rates of between 100-133 MHz (PC133 is just arriving). RDRAM is a serial protocol transferring 16 bit chunks at higher speeds. The big numbers you see, e.g. RD800, aren't comparable to the SDRAM speeds. RD800 transfers data at 400 MHz, but transfers data at the rising and falling edges of the clock, hence the "800". But because it's transferring 16-bit quantities, it's the equivalent of PC200. RD800 is in short supply because of yield problems; RD700 is the most common type in current use. Plans are well underway to extend SDRAM to use the double-data-rate transfer method as well (so-called DDR SDRAM, or PC266). SDRAM has a big advantage over RDRAM in terms of latency; for many classes of applications RDRAM runs slower because of this issue, even with its higher bandwidth. And with PC266 the bandwidth issue cuts in favour of SDRAM, at least until Rambus widens RDRAM to 32 bits and comes out with RD1600. Well, I've said my piece, and I'll admit my sources seem biased. Everything I think I know about PC hardware I owe to Tom Pabst's excellent web site, tomshardware.com. Go check it out for yourself. And good luck, regardless - I never short, so I have no stake in RMBS one way or the other. I don't wish them (or you) any ill fortune.