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Intel To Drop RAMBUS In Favor of DDR RAM
El Pollo Loco writes: "Anandtech has this news article. Basically, Intel has decided to drop expensive rambus memory and instead to go with cheaper DDR memory."
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They see the light, and its at two passes per clock.
Very soon Rambus will disapear from our memories!
Watch the RAMBUS litigation machine swing into overdrive, now that they can't even pretend to make things...
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
I wonder how much of this switch was due to the recent scandals - are Intel worried about the pockets of their customers? have they decided to stick with less, ahem, notorious technologies? are they truly concerned with the performance? I notice they haven't mentioned comparitive benchmarks in the article though... not a good sign.
If their competitors follow suit, we'll see what happens.
jer
We may be human, but we're still animals
- Steve Vai
This is a bit of a shock, really. RDRAM *is* a half decent solution for some high end boxes. That article from the windbags over at Tom's Hardware showed (kinda) sucessfully that there is a great deal of potential in RDRAM. I am an AMD / DDR user, but I have to admit that the P4 with a 133x4 bus is damn nice.
tinfoilmedia
Tom has been such a whore for Rambus lately. First he is strongly against and then switches teams right in the thick of it. Does anyone else thing that he was taking money?
Like the recent benchmark with a comparison of preproduction 533RDRAM with PC333.
Apples and oranges, anyone?
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Obviously, this is bad news for Intel but great great news for the industry in general.
Intel tried to push RAMBUS heavily. In fact, it tried to ram it down people's throats (no pun intended). For various reasons, not least of all cost, not too many people were happy with this state of affairs.
I can recall when Intel were pushing RAMBUS as the best thing since sliced bread and were denouncing DDR RAM as a pile of pants but now the company's been forced to perform a complete volte face.
Why does this matter? It matters because Intel, despite it's near total dominance of the desktop market, has been shifted from leading the herd to being forced to run with it. It just goes to prove, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink it.
Of course, all this doesn't change the fact that Intel is a major player, and will get its own way in lots of other areas but it's nice to see that it can't win 'em all.
Additionally, one fewer memory standard should help drive down the long-term cost of DDR RAM further (right now it's a twice what it was in November 2001 but still at least a third cheaper than March 2001).
Good news all round. Score one for the other guys.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Hmm...
After hours trading opened at 6.24 (drop of about 14%), but it seems to have recovered to 7.10. This is after rising 20% yesterday because of a "design" breakthrough (the RIMM 4200)
RMBS
There's a transcript of some of the discussions between the Intel bods at Reuters, here. It gets a tad boring after the first page, but there's some great stuff in there. :D
"This is the market calling, we want fast and cheap RAM."
"Oh, yes, we finally listened. I was concerned you might be Rambus Attorney's trying to sue us over breach of contract."
"Nope, not us, we don't care, but wait until their stock gets two about 20 a share, anyone who still cares about Intel getting into bed with the devil might!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
In other words, East German RAM? Considering the manufacturing abilities of socialist states, I'm not sure I'd like this. Besides, since East Germany disappeared long ago, these chips would have to be... quite old.
I believe that in the end Rambus may be the better product but it's the way Rambus (Co) ran it's busisness that makes this happy news for me. Are the voices of the geeks who pay attention to this partly to blame for Rambus going out? -- I'd like to think we played a part in it. :)
I am Jack's HTTP Server
Since this move will only be one toward the end of the year, that will mean that the P4 will still be heavily based on RAMBUS memory.
Even though there are several other P4 motherboards out there supporting DDR RAM for the P4, the point is that Intel will have to support DDR and RAMBUS for their P4 fully.
I can see complications brewing... this should test Intel's mettle.
Otherwise, they may decide to leave the current P4 chips with RAMBUS for now, in which case the customers who bought into it are screwed.
I'm an AMD fan (see me twirl!), but RAMBUS have screwed Intel for the last time with overpriced and underperforming memory.
Intel's i845 chipset has supported DDR for quite some time.
Rambus "PC800" memory actually runs at 400MHz and uses the rising and falling edges of the clock so technically it is also double data rate and could be called DDR.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
It's only 8:37 and Rambus stock is already down 6%. I imagine it will drop some more. They made an announcement yesterday that they're going to start making cheaper memory, and it boosted their stock a lot. I think they'll completely lose that gain. Personally, I'd like to see them go out of business just because of their crappy attitude in the industry towards consumers and competitors.
Ok, we planned for Hammer and we fully embraced DDR, now go over and spy on AMD again, this time use a car, instead of taking months to walk there and back!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I have used a system with rdram and it was nice , I didn't have to pay for it, but then again it was a HP dual P3 system.
,that is like putting scsi 320 on my moms machine.
IMHO I think they should have used rd only in highend server and workstations market not in the consumer level
Just plain stupid.
Dr. Suess: 'Gandalf, Gandalf! Take the ring! I am too small to carry this thing!' 'I can not, will not hold the One.
Doesn't DDR SDRAM cost about as much as RAMBUS memory?
Is this decision entirely from the goodnless of their hearts, or is there something else afoot with this. I mean we all agree that RAMBUS was poisoning the well with all their crazy licensing and (fradulent) patent demands, but does Intel know something about the future of chip-supply that we don't? From all indications, Rambus has profitability in it's sights, but with Intel freeing themselves from that yoke with the i845 (?) chipset, perhaps Rambus is going to find themselves pushed to niche markets (servers, high-speed clusters, etc...) I mean SiS has a chipset that supports it going forward (correct me if I'm wrong), but who's going to keep on the bandwagon now that Tulloch has been deep 6'ed and some of the original arguements for RAMBUS are getting weak. Is there anyone who has any concrete reasons for shopping mobo's with that feature or are we looking at tech that's going to get leapfroged in the next 6-12 months?
hmmm, food for thought from someone who's shopping for a new mobo... (hmmm, Soyo or ABIT?)
"If I wanted your input on my pet project, I'd stick my hand up your ass and use you like a sock-puppet." - Muse
Did we not hear of this a long time ago...like last spring?
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
It must be frustrating being Intel- I see tons of "cheap" P4 systems using SDRAM...
It seems the public is very fickle- they want a "fast" processor without looking at overall system performance
Meanwhile, AMD is getting away with selling Athlon 1800+ chips, which many people actually think run at 1800+ mhz.
Regardless of price, I'm convinced most ordinary people want ONE NUMBER for which to compare PCs.... not 17 different variables... they want one single number to sum it all up- and that seems to be mhz.
Meanwhile, until the economy "straightens out"- businesses seem to still be buying P3 systems, or at least shying away from the bleeding edge. At least both job sites I work at have been very conservative in their purchasing...
Those that suggest you "dance like no one is watching" really want to see you make a complete fool of yourself.
The change is actually restricted to four tiny little Intel products .. all desktops, workstations, servers and notebooks.
Read the article carefully. The change is on 1 product line only.
First, this is an EBM story. Why link to a 2nd hand report that has a link to the primary source right on the page?
Second, it's spurious: "An Intel workstation roadmap secured by EBN" strongly implies that this is not an official Intel announcement.
Third, while it's not such a huge deal for Intel, it's a huge furry deal for Rambus Inc., the well known firm of lawyers. Rambus Inc. is a public company, and as such has an obligation to announce significant events effecting future earnings. "A spokeswoman for Rambus Inc. said she couldn't comment on new Intel workstation chipsets supporting DDR, and referred all questions to Intel" simply doesn't cut it. Rambus Inc. might be greedy lying parasites, but they're surely not stupid enough to sit on information that they must - must - have known about prior to this (alleged) policy change.
Given that Rambus Inc. share price rose 22% yesterday based on the news that Intel had adopted the 533Mhz FSB to support RDRAM, the SEC will no doubt be having a good, long look at their disclosures and these "yes we will/no we won't" announcements, and asking who exactly is releasing them, and who is benefitting from the share fluctuations.
Let's hold fire on this until it's been confirmed by both Intel and Rambus Inc. Please. Pretty please.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
this is what i've been waiting to hear, I design system computer packages for a local computer store and it was becomming a pain in the ass to try and tell what motherboard (socket 423 or 478) using either SDRAM or DDR RAM or RDRAM. Some of the sales people didn't know how to tell the difference eitehr, so they would sell a system with a socket 478 motherboard using SDRAM with a socket 423 processor and RDRAM.
At least this will finally make my job a little easier and I won't have to double check all the new computer sales as much anymore.
They should boycott DDR ram memory in protest
against the terrible human rights situation in
communist East Germany.
Buying DDR RAM is supporting the communists!
I didn't see any references here, so here it is:
http://www.ebnews.com/story/OEG20020226S0040
- Mike
If you just read the headline above and the linked *clipping* of a story, you'd think Intel is dropping RAMBUS completely. That is not the case. Here's the original story that the clipping came from. Intel is dropping *exclusive* support for RDRAM. Here's a relevant quote:
/. earlier this week.
Also, although not new products, the next iterations of its 850 and 860 chipsets, supporting a 533MHz front-side, will support RDRAM when they arrive, probably in the second half of this year.
This ties in perfectly with Tom's Hardware review of a new, pre-release 533MHz RDRAM chipset and the Anandtech review of the new Intel DDR-based chipset linked to by
I think the reason why Intel may be supporting more DDR-SDRAM installations for desktop platforms is the fact that the latest DDR-SDRAM variants already equal the speed of RDRAM for large data blocks but substantially cost way less than RDRAM on a per 128 MB basis. I believe also that motherboard manufacturing costs are lower for DDR-SDRAM than RDRAM, too.
Intels decision to drop rambus in favour of DDR, DDRII, and dual channel versions of it isn't because of the desktop market at all. Which is what is misleading here.
Intel has always known that RAMBUS is not the best thing for servers, since servers need large amounts of memory. The serial configuration RAMBUS must be put it, along with its higher latency, leads to poor performance when in large amounts. This isn't acceptable, and doesn't happen with DDR, its the primary reason they are switching.
That and RAMBUS runs hotter then the P4 CPUs
I'm no RAM expert, but couldn't this be some sort of trick by Intel? I've got an AMD myself and I like their style, but I think companies will always keep in mind what their competitors are doing. When Intel drops the support on RAMBUS, could it be possible AMD will adapt their research strategies because of this and focus on DDR or something like that? Intel dropping support doesn't mean their dropping the technology as a whole. Maybe they're still researching cheaper/better implementations for Rambus and when they find them, milk out DDR some more, before going full blast with Rambus and leaving AMD behind. Is any of this possible or is it better for me to quit watching the X-files?
You do not exist. Go away.
If you read the article, it only talks about Xeon.
/. software libre radicals. Maybe memory manufacturers could buy the miserable company and do a proper JEDEC serial ram standard.
So, just curious, maybe they will go on making P4 RDRAM chipsets. There are real, honest advantages to serial bus and serious problems to paraller bus when the clock rate goes up.
Just why do you think there's only Nvidia's dual DDR P4 chipset? Which no-one seems to be using too much? One DDR module has 184 pins, dual that to 368 and I start seeing black spots just thinking about routing that in PCB..
In any case, I don't like Rambus any more than stereotypical
HAH HAH!!!!
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
Hadn't it already become obvious Intel had made a mistake and was going to drop Rambus anyway? I mean the first step in the grave for Rambus was Intel doing ANYTHING with DDR, once they saw DDR was better it was over. Then Rambus shooting themselves in the foot (A LA we want to sue everyone because we are anal retentive!) I thought this was the consensus about 6 months ago. But for once (since the last of the socket 7 CPU's) GOOD FOR INTEL! At least they are willing to admit a mistake and change it..... maybe theres hope for them yet!...... naw nevermind AMD is better anyway.
Why did Intel fully support RDRAM when the cost was 3x-5x that of SDRAM and DDR, and now that they are about the same cost, they plan on dumping RDRAM even though PC1066 RDRAM will be the best performer on the P4? With DDR stuck at 333MHz (166MHz x 2) until 2004, RDRAM makes the most sense for high end CPUs (P4 and Clawhammer/Sledgehammer) which will be starved for memory bandwidth. I have a suspicion that Intel wrote RDRAM out of the roadmaps for public relations reasons, and that when the time is right RDRAM will be back in force.
HAhaha. Stupid article: SDRAM = Single Data Rate A.... M.... hahaha
You're mostly right. Most /.'ers went on an anti-Rambus rant and assumed Intel was dropping RDRAM across the entire line.
The EBN article clearly says that the new chipsets are for workstations (graphics, software engineerings, MCAD, etc.). Folks, these are machines that have at least 512MB of RAM. They are not mainstream desktops...
For now, Intel is still pushing RDRAM for mainstream desktops...
--Al
Intel's support of Rambus over DDR SDRAM in high-end systems is just beginning to be justified, if you've seen the latest benchmarks on tomshardware. DDR SDRAM is a bit more unstable at higher clock speeds and Rambus seems to be able to scale nicely. I don't like Rambus as a company one bit, but until I see more info from other news sites, I'm going to remain a little skeptical about this claim.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
... is playing catchup technology wise with AMD. First Intel is considering making their own 64bit x86 CPU if the Hammer family takes off. Now they're jumping on the DDR bandwagon. Which is not to mention them having to play catchup in the P3 vs. Athlon game that went on for a few months. AMD may not have the economic lead, but technologically they've got Intel beat several times over. I wonder when we'll get leaks about what the K9 family will offer because it's doubtful Intel will come up with anything superior before then worth looking at :)
This is a really odd announcement, especially considering this article released by Tom's Hardware Guide yesterday. Basically, the article tested the upcoming P4 chips at 2666mhz and 2533mhz, and stated many times that the performance gained by using both a 133mhz FSB and 533mhz memory clock would show enormous gains over any current Intel or AMD processor. Some of the performance numbers on THG's graphs were rather impressive.
So I see one of two things here. Either this report is wildly inaccurate or misinterpreted, or Intel sure is shooting themselves in the foot yet again. As soon as they create technology that can utilize Rambus' enormous memory bandwidth, they can the technology? Something about that doesn't sound right. Intel may be dumb, but they're stubborn too. If this is true, they sure picked a hell of a time to seriously rethink their relationship with Rambus.
Yes. All the rage with disgraced businessmen in Japan, cordless bungee jumping has become the "in" thing at RAMBUS.
In other news, bookmakers have opened wagers on what augers in first at RAMBUS. Their business leaders, their lawyers, or their stock prices.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The best part of this announcement at IDF was that Rambus was there, and was even a gold sponsor. "Come see our ultra permorming RDRAM in action at our booth...ccchh This is the CEO of Intel, we are dropping Rambus, thank you...DAMNIT!" http://www.rambus.com/company/events.html#idf
Rambus was just starting to become affordable (on par with DDR), there are a ton of new benchmarks showing that in several applications, the P4 at high clock speeds actually benefits tremendously from Rambus. Just when it actually starts to look good, they decide to drop it?
Check out:
Tom's Hardware
"This is because the Pentium 4 has a problem: the increase in clock speed (e.g. P4/2533 or P4/2666) will be rendered useless by the slow DDR SDRAM memory bus of the 845 platform. In the mass market, the 845 chipset dominates by nearly 100% - and this will remain the case for the next six months. But only 533 MHz RDRAM enables the processor to attain high performance. Eventually, the dual-channel DDR solution will receive some sort of technological boost, however there's still no sign of development in this area."
I guess there's only one thing left to say: GO AMD!!!
-- Adam
This is not new news!
It's quite GOOD entertainment for all of us who've been damning RAMBUS as the Anti-Christ of litigation-happy companies for the past few years now.
And now we fiddle whilst RAMBUS burns.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Note, first of all, that it is in fact quite true that Intel is (planning on) dropping all new RDRAM-based designs from their x86 chipset lineup soon. The last "new" RDRAM chipset Intel releases will be the upcoming 850E, which is just the 850 but speed bumped to work with the upcoming 533MHz FSB P4s (due in April), and to match them with PC1066 RDRAM. Of course, this is very old news, known from Intel roapmaps obtained by everyone and their mom back in October or November.
But that's not what the article says. It's talking only about chipsets for servers and workstations, where, indeed, the 860 is being replaced by the just introducted dual-channel DDR E-7500 (Plumas) and the upcoming dual-channel DDR Placer (as well as a just-introduced chipset from Broadcom), and where the 850 will be replaced by the dual-channel DDR Granite Bay chipset, due in Q3 or so.
Thing is, dual-channel DDR for the *desktop* won't arrive from Intel until sometime in 2003, with the Springdale chipset. (Dual-channel DDRII, in fact.) VIA and SiS are both trying to get their dual-channel DDR chipsets out in time for the 533 FSB P4s (doubtful, but they should be in full swing by Q3), but, again, if you want the very highest-performing P4 desktop, and you want an Intel chipset, you'll either need to ridiculously overpay for a Granite Bay (workstation oriented) motherboard, or you'll have to use the 850E with PC1066 RDRAM, or you'll have to wait until Springdale in 2003.
So, to reiterate:
1) Yes, RDRAM is gone from all future Intel chipset introductions save the 850E, which is just a speed bump, not a new chipset.
2) But that's not what this article is talking about; it's only talking about servers and workstations.
3) RDRAM won't be completely gone until there is a dual-channel DDR chipset to replace it on the desktop; soon from VIA and SiS, not until 2003 from Intel.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but where I live (Denmark), the prices for DDR-RAM and RD-RAM are nearly the same.
Sorry, not AC but at work w/o password.
I've been looking to build a new system for a month now and have been doing the price / performance comparisons.
As of yesterday, the price for a 256 MB stick of rambus was around $75 and both DDR 300 and 333 were in the low to mid $90s (at googlegear).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but for a P4 system, strictly based on cost and even ignoring rambus's higher bandwidth, isn't rambus the better deal?
The obligatory jokes about the country formerly known as East Germany and Konami's Dance Dance Revolution every time Slashdot posts a story about double data rate SDRAM are getting so old that they're already in the encyclopedia.
Will I retire or break 10K?
This comes as quite a shock to me, especially since Intel recently unveiled a chipset supporting Rambus 533. In fact I was under the impression based on reviews I have read that the Pentium 4 only performs to its potential when paired with a 133Mhz FSB and RDRAM 533 based on 1066 spec. Rambus 533 should Offer 4 GB/sec compared to DDR 266 with a 2.3 GB/sec bus. TomsHardware.com did a review of this setup and the Pentium 4 does exhibit a huge increase when paired with the faster Ram technology even compared to DDR 333 spec. A move like this really makes me wonder what is going on behind Intel's closed doors. Without RDRAM they would lose their speed advantage over AMD... time will tell I suppose.
I've never run into speed or compatiblity issues with Rambus; I can not say the same for DDR memory.
I can't tell you how many chipsets i've dealt with in the past year that had issues with filling all the memory sockets; general timing and compatibility issues....damn....via even has speed issues regarding filling all the dimm sockets with ram on some of their chipsets! That's rediculous.
How many Rambus issues have I had? Let's see....NONE.
Granted, Rambus was expensive, but has anyone looked at DDR vs. Rambus lately? The pricing is almost equal.
Hopefully Intel will release STABLE chipsets and possibly force DDR technology to be as cross-compatible as Rambus.
-ted
Tom is not biased per say, must opinionated. That does color his reports and articles, sure, but I dare you to find one magazine that doesn't do the same.
I write for a game website doing Hardware reviews with 52million hits a month. I am just as guilty as the next guy. You can't help but be biased based on your own personal experience and background, dealings with hardware reps, etc... it all colors your reports and opinions.
Take, for example, the KT266A vs nForce 420 [tomshardware.com] test. The benchmarks show the nForce in the middle of the pack for most tests - roughly half the KT266A boards faster and half slower. And with margins of 2% in most tests. Yet the "Conclusion" was that "KT266A Trounces nForce 420D" and that "the nForce 420D is currently no match for the new KT266A". What a load of crap. Of course little things like total system cost and features were ignored - the nForce has a significantly better sound chip than the KT266A and all nForce boards have integrated network (only some KT266A's do).
Wrong... the KT266A, in terms of performance and value and stability (he doesn't touch on it much in the article, but if you have been keeping up there has been a glaring drop off in Nvidia's quality of drivers as of late, including significant deviations in their WHQL AGP4x driver implimentations which is causing a great many Via and SiS based chipset boards to BSOD in ALL ms operating systems with infinite loop errors and nv4disp.dll problems). Trounce is a strong word, but it is obviously better than the nForce (and your perception of audio is interesting and an opinion of question too).
His reversal is pretty clear, though I guess he could have stated it more obviously for those people like you that need it slapped in their face and can't just understand what they are reading. You may have a valid point, however, regarding comparing a 2600 system directly to the 2000XP, but only if you take it strictly as a hardware benchmark test and not as an example of the future months ahead and Intel's newest chips due out.
Did they really think people wanted to pay that much for memory? Why didn't they just engineer a nice DDR chipset in the first place? Seems like a no brainer to me. Uh gee, people like paying less per performance unit so...
Derek Greene
Not if you figure in the cost of a 2+GHZ intel chip... it's twice to three times as expensive as an athlonXP at a 2000 rating.
However, based on recent tests at sites like Toms Hardware and Anadtech, you might be better off going with Rambus due to the higher memory throughput that the P4 demands and thrives on.
Rambus is, for all intensive purposes, equal in price to DDR.
Intents and purposes. Sorry for being a grammar nazi, but I just couldn't take it anymore.
Intensive purposes makes me picture a bunch of Rambus execs in sweatbands and jogging suits chicking their pulses as they type up new 'cease-and-desist' orders.
El riesgo vive siempre!
Although I have grown to hate rambus, it will make a come back when DDR falls apart in the near future. Check out the tests at tomshardware.com, the DDR ram just can handle higher clock speeds, whereas rdram just starts to come into its own. I think we might all have to come crawling back to rambus because there will be the only solution for faster machines...
I waited until the prices dropped. When RAMBUS memory stated appearing in circuit city I was delighted. It appears that supply has finally caught up with demand and the prices appear to be as good as other RAM prices. I see not reason to give up on the speek offered by RAMBUS because of manufacturing delays.
I always thought RAMBUS sounded like a brand of condom.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
right here as well as right here It seems we have been running out of subjects lately... No?
No sign of development in dual DDR chipsets? High-end dual DDR chipsets are popping up all over, and recent leaks show that VIA is working on a desktop dual DDR chipset.
It shows that Intel is a progressive company in that they are open to changes (better ways) and not stuck on proving themselves right. The last step in the engineering design process is "to perform post-implementation review and assessment," which this reflects. Intel also saw that their slot architecture wasn't good and switched back to sockets during the PIII's run. (What the benefits of either architectures are, I'm not sure) My question: will Intel's use of DDR bring prices up by decrease in supply?
MAKE YOUR TIME
One of the advantages that Rambus memory had was that it was a higher speed serial connection (sort of) to the CPU. Someday, this same type of architecture may be needed if they want the CPU to communicate to the memory through some type of optical channel. Right now, memory has at least a 64bit data connection thus requiring 64 lines (and susceptible to interference). Maybe it's just that rambus' technology isn't ready yet.
Check Pricewatch before claiming DDR costs less. Really, it's about the same price as RDRAM. If Rambus weren't such a lame and litigious company, I'd be sad at hearing this announcement. I think the technology is good. I hope their engineers, who have done a decent job, get really pissed off that their stupid marketing/legal departments stunk up the company so badly that even Intel couldn't stay in bed with them. If I were a start techie at Rambus, I'd put up my resume today!
People don't buy x86 for speed. They buy x86 (whether it's Intel or AMD) because it's very cheap and has decent performance for its price. If you want speed and price isn't a big factor, then you don't buy x86. You don't buy RAMBUS because your CPU isn't from Intel; your CPU is from IBM or DEC (RIP) or someone else, and you use whatever type of RAM they tell you to.
Having fast expensive memory systems for x86 chips defies that principle. There is no market for it.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Maybe it's just me, but this sounds like just another instance of the technology giant trying to push a superior but tightly controlled standard...and losing out to an inferior standard that happened to be cheaper and easier for competitors to produce. Happens time and again in this industry. Ask IBM how well their Micro Channel dominated the market that was suffering the slowness of ISA.
Sure, RAMBUS wasn't actually Intel's technology, but they were sure pushing it pretty hard.
AMD is defining what mainstream 64 bit computing will be like. Itanium is all but dead.
But what about the recent article about Intel's newest architecture, using 533MHz RAMBUS DRAM? That article, and the comments associated with it, state that, price-wise, the RDRAM is no longer significantly higher than DDR SDRAM, and with the new faster FSB, will blow DDR right out of the proverbial water.
Is Intel reneging on their statements of yesterday, or is Tom's Hardware or Anandtech just getting false information?
If RDRAM is no longer more expensive and is in fact a better choice for a fast system, should the company be left out in the cold? Bear in mind that I don't like the way RAMBUS has been treating people, but I do believe that the best product should always be able to live on, and RDRAM has surely been making strides.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Anyone else bothered by the talk of a .09 micron process at the bottom of the article? I may have my numbers wrong but I thought that .1 microns was as small as it gets before quantum tunneling and other effects take over.
Last I check on pricewatch, they were the same price give or take three dollars dpending on the manufacturer.
And didnt Intel just recently announce that they were going with a quad pumped 133mhz bus (I.E. Rambuss 1066) for their 2.5ghz chips?
This is just so much fluffer.
chicking their pulses
That's why never correct the spelling of others.
okay, so intel are switching to ddr ram, yet rambus is the only ram that can deliver the bandwidth required, could somebody explain to me why this is a good businesss decision?
that's not a smart idea on intel's part, rdram is getting cheaper (although it still is more expensive than ddr) and the bandwidth it provides really helps it pull ahead of amd in bandwidth intensive programs... think unreal chamionship here kids, i won't be surprised if intel takes rdram back again when the cpu speeds go a lot faster
C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg
Read this:
5 29 /index.html
http://www6.tomshardware.com/mainboard/00q2/000
According to Tom's, increased CPU speed doesn't equal better RDRAM performance at all, and RDRAM does NOT provide more bandwidth than SDRAM (PC-133 SDRAM at that).
http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/00q2/000529/ index.html/
Damn thing keeps inserting spaces for no apparent reason http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/00q2/000529/ index.html/