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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Porter who wrote (60533)	6/4/1999 2:02:00 AM
From: RDM	Respond to of 1571216

DDR SDRAM Will Make Debut In Graphics Arena (06/03/99, 1:30 p.m. ET) By Jack Robertson, Semiconductor Business News Double-data-rate SDRAM will crack the PC market in graphics chip sets beginning this fall, a jump start many memory-chip vendors believe will position DDR as a high-speed contender in other applications as well. Companies such as Micron, Hitachi, and Samsung are gearing up their DDR graphics programs months before the double-clocked interface is expected to arrive as main memory in desktop PCsand servers. "Getting an early start as dedicated memory in graphics chip sets will definitely boost DDR," said Jim Sogas, director of DRAM business operations at Hitachi Semiconductor (America) Inc. in San Jose. Samsung Electronics Inc., which is slated to ramp 128-Mbit chips supporting the Direct Rambus DRAM interface for PCs later this year, is already making its first DDR production shipments to several unidentified graphics vendors. "Graphics chip-set vendors are always the first to jump on a new, faster DRAM," said Avo Kanadjian, vice president of memory marketing at the San Jose company. "They were first to use EDO RAM and the first to use SDRAM. They'll be the first to use DDR." Micron Technology Inc. and Infineon Technologies AG also are shipping DDR SDRAM samples to graphics-accelerator manufacturers in the hope that the sector will be the first to order production quantities of the devices. Desi Rhoden, chairman of Advanced Memory International Inc., a coalition of suppliers that supports DDR, said early adoption by the graphics market could speed the memory's penetration elsewhere. "It endorses and makes DDR more acceptable in other applications," said Rhoden, who works in Tempe, Ariz. "DRAM companies also gain early experience in making the new chip, so it will enter the rest of the PC market as a mature product with no surprises." Some vendors within the DDR camp said a production ramp in the graphics sector could even position DDR ahead of its Direct RDRAM rival in the race for desktop-PC design-ins. Rambus Inc., which designed the Direct RDRAM interface and has received substantial support from Intel Corp., declined to comment. Although vastly smaller than the PC market, the graphics arena stands to offer DDR a respectable incubation, according to observers. George Iwanyc, an analyst at Dataquest Inc., San Jose, estimated that graphics chip-set sales last year exceeded $1.6 billion - a 60-percent increase from 1997. And he expects similar growth this year. Iwanyc said that in many ways DDR is well suited as buffer memory in graphics chip sets, particularly because of its wide, 64-bit organization; high speed; and relatively low cost. According to Andreas von Zitzewitz, vice president of operations at Infineon in Munich, Germany, customers are already sampling DDR SDRAM with clock speeds of 300 and even 400 MHz. As frame-buffer memory, DDR would also sidestep many of the timing and interface issues associated with main memory, because the frame buffer communicates directly with the graphics processor without the need for an intervening core-logic chip set. This point-to-point connection gives graphics designers more flexibility, and makes it easier for memory companies to sell an assortment of DDR versions that may test out at various clock speeds, according to proponents. In fact, numerous oddball DDR chip speeds - from 275 to 311 MHz - are expected to show up in many graphics chip sets. Moreover, graphics vendors are free to begin using DDR chips even before details of the so-called PC200 and PC266 DDR SDRAM main-memory specifications are finalized, proponents said.