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To: tinkershaw who wrote (74847)	6/23/2001 2:47:56 AM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 93625

Hi tinkershaw; Re: "The question is, does RDRAM or DDR get us there. RDRAM certainly scales much better." What does "scales" mean? I'm not being sarcastic answering this. DDR took the small end of the market, with every design win except for the PS2, as well as the very large end of the market. The only market where RDRAM exists is the PS2 and the markets that Intel's "mistake" gave to it. So where is the scaling? It obviously isn't a scaling in size. Similarly, as time has gone on, DDR has scaled in bandwidth much better than RDRAM. In only 2 years, DDR has gone from x8 200MHz data rates to x32 600MHz data rates. In that same time, RDRAM has remained limited to x16 800MHz data rates. So where is the mysterious place where RDRAM scales well? -- Carl

To: tinkershaw who wrote (74847)	6/23/2001 3:33:36 AM
From: dumbmoney	Respond to of 93625

The funny thing is, is that with Moore's law working, you can buy a computer with 20x the memory and practically 1000x faster today for the same price that I bought that computer for in 1991. The change is that average selling prices (ASP) have decreased. People are choosing to move down the price curve. The ASP for a PC was steady at around $3,000 for many, many years. Basically, people bought as much PC as they could afford. It started to come down around 4 years ago (as I recall), and it's still dropping. Likewise, the ASPs of parts that go into PCs - hard drives for example - are dropping. The drive to higher performance is as intense as ever, it's just happening at a lower price. (Incidentally, this is not true of the videogame console market. ASPs are steady or even increasing. 3D games are much more performance hungry than Microsoft Office!)

To: tinkershaw who wrote (74847)	6/23/2001 1:03:31 PM
From: Skeeter Bug	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

ts, i am not disputing history in the slightest. however, i do maintain that the difference between a 386 and 486 is much different than between a piii and piv. decisions are made on a marginal cost vs marginal benefit basis (econ 101 - so simple yet quite brilliant). since the marginal benefits are slim, folks aren't willing to pay much for the benefits. the only thing keeping unit sales growing are collapsing prices due to supply / demand dynamics. yes, set the avg pc price at $3000 and adjust for inflation and pc unit sales will collapse - even though performance is improving. it isn't enough to justify the cost. it was in the old days when hardware was dragging everyone down. it no longer does in 95%+ of the circumstances.