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To: RetiredNow who wrote (20189)	5/13/1999 1:39:00 AM
From: Alan Bell	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

The PlayStation 2000's Graphics Synthesizer chip has 4MB of embedded DRAM. It is used for the frame buffer where going off chip would be way too slow. This doesn't stop them from needing 32MB of DRDRAM for the bulk of their memory needs. Nitendo's architecture is probably doing the same thing, possibly with DRDRAM. The amount of embedded DRAM that can be placed on a chip is limited to a fraction (1/4 - 1/2 of 8-32MB) of the amount of memory that can be placed on a DRAM only chip. So systems that need large amounts of memory will continue to need off chip memory. For something like a graphics chip which needs around 32MB of memory, DRDRAM makes a lot of sense. DRAM manufacturers like to only make the densest chips. This means an SDRAM Dimm built on a 128Mbit dram in a x16 configuration would be 64MByte. This is more memory than they could afford to attach to the graphics chip. DRDRAM doesn't have this problem because they don't need to be ganged in a 4 chip wide configuration. -- Alan