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To: Richard Habib who wrote (27834)	3/10/2000 5:24:00 AM
From: Doren	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 213182

Interesting to note that servers will use DDR. I've sort of glossed over the facts but I believe the i820 and i840 chipsets are plagued with problems, and it was my understanding that Rambus memory is part of the problem. From the Register #2: Channel furious about Xeon support, i840 glitches Problems with the i840 chip set have led to decline in revenues for distributors and dealers having stock of chips with no motherboard support, it has emerged. A US dealer, who bought 40 Xeon processors on the 10th of January, told us today that his distributor has now received instructions from Intel to honour any dealer request who wishes to return processors because of the lack of mobo problem. The dealer, who did not wish to be named, said: "The truth is, Intel has sold and delivered a product that is totally worthless since there is not one commercially available motherboard that will run any of the so-called Xeon 600MHz processors with 133MHz front side bus." The problem was confirmed by a European distributor, who said this morning: "We used to have a business selling Xeons but it has gradually been chipped away." He said: "We will only support Pentium IIIs using the Lancewood motherboard. Motherboard product has been hard to get. The Cyprus motherboard, for example, we won't support with anything running at over 550MHz on a 100MHz front side bus. "There have been deaths on the 840," he said, referring to the problem with the memory translator hub on Hemlock and Willow motherboards. That's down to synchronous memory problems in conjunction with Rambus. The dearth of support for the i840s has come as a surprise following the debacle with the i820 chipset last year. When the i840 chipset, which comes with dual channel Rambus support was introduced, Intel said that it was a separately designed chipset which would not suffer the kind of problems the i820 had. There is third party motherboard support for the 840 chipset, but distributors have done good business selling boxed Intel chips and motherboards, while many dealers will only buy Intel because their customers demand it. © From the Register #2: Hyundai hedges bets on Rambus production A report in Semiconductor Business News is confirming earlier reports that Samsung is to boost its production of Rambus memory. But at the same time, Hyundai seems to be dithering over whether to put its stake into this particular piece of the memory turf. Samsung will ramp up production from two million units a month to 10 million units a month in Q2, and will mostly manufacture 288Mbit chips, the report says. But Hyundai is adopting a wait and see approach before committing more of its manufacturing clout to the memory technology. Currently it makes around five million Rambus pieces a month. Adoption of Rambus memory production has been slow to date because the RIMMs (memory modules) have been expensive compared to synchronous DRAM (SDRAM). Further, problems Intel had in shipping its Rambus i820 chipset at the end of last year put a dent in consumer's expectations. But Intel, which has investments in both Samsung and Rambus, insisted at a bi-annual developer forum last month, that it was still committed to the memory technology. It has publicly stated that it believes Rambus will be the best memory option for the Willamette processor it will introduce this autumn, while the server version of Willamette, codenamed Foster, will use double data rate (DDR) memory. The Rambus share price (ticker RMBS) has seen some extraordinary fluctuations over the last year. Its 52 week low happened on April 23rd last year, when it stood at $51.5. Its high was at $379 just yesterday but fell by over $4 by close of trading. ©