Rambus Production Capacity Switched to Make SDRAM

Jon Rabone writes " NEC, Japan's largest chipmaker is halting Rambus production to make SDRAM. Both NEC and Samsung are to switch production over to SDRAM - sounds to me like RAMBUS could be in danger of dying the death, after Intel's latest problems with the Camino chipset. At least we might see SDRAM prices fall again. "

Comments

The reason? Volume.

[Wakko Warner]

CompUSA probably has a warehouse full of RAM they bought back when prices were low. They can afford to sell it at the prices they're selling it at now and still make a huge profit because they bought it so cheaply back then. Little RAM dealers (like the kind of people you see at computer shows and on Pricewatch) buy tiny fractions of what CompUSA buys, and they tend not to have any overstock sitting around, so they *must* charge more, because they're paying today's prices, not the price RAM was in June.

As always, it's best to look at all the options before you buy stuff -- don't always just head on over to pricewatch and think you've gotten a great deal. :)

- A.P. (speaking of great deals, checked the prices for 18 gig U2W scsi drives lately?)
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Mandated technology

[overshoot]

• Not really surprising. Engineering by fiat fails if trumped by a Higher Authority (e.g., physics)
  
• The problem isn't the Camino chip, it's the physics. Turns out that Rambus has a major signal-integrity failure mode that sort of got swept under the rug until the systems houses got bit by it.
  
• The DRAM companies never liked Rambus, but had their arms twisted by Intel. Now they have a chance to bail and are taking it.
  
• The comment about DDR (double-data-rate SDRAM) having no standard will come as quite a surprise to the people at the memory companies and in particular JEDEC's JC-42 memory committee, which thinks that they have issued one, and AMII, which is sponsored by the memory industry (including NEC and Samsung) to promote its use.

Good and bad news

[R. Anthony]

Hopefully SDRAM prices will drop as a result of this, as a lot of companies stopped fabricating DRAM back in June as a result of the overabundance of cheap Taiwanese DRAM selling at $4. I'd personally like to see SDRAM fall back to somewhat more reasonable level as $360 is not a fair price IMHO for a 128 MB DIMM when the production cost is marginally less (300%).

However. SDRAM won't suffice forever as it can't (disclaimer: as far as I know) be overclocked much higher than it already is (140 MHz is the highest I've read about before stability issues arise). RDRAM on the other hand can run up to 800 MHz. The heat sync looks rather cute, but the memory is tragically flawed by it's miniscule 16 bit bus (as opposed to the 64 bit SDRAM bus to the front side system bus).

Rambus really needs to go back to the drawing board on this before they bring it back to market, if it is ever given another chance. Intel in partnering with Rambus was seeing Large dollar signs in an unending stream of royalty payments on every future RDRAM RIMM sold for many years to come. Chalk it up to another case of greed overriding sensibility.

Re:Good and bad news

[tak amalak]

What you said about SDRAM is correct. But there are companies that will be producing DDR-SDRAM (Double Data Rate SDRAM) that can send signals up and down a cycle, effectively doubling the clock rate to 200-266MHz (depending on if they are using PC100 or PC133 chips).
Benefits:
* 64bit memory throughput to the system
* Much lower latency than RAMBUS
* Uses tested SDRAM technology
* Can be easily implemented in cheaper systems
* Has 2.1GBps max transfer rate compared to 1.6GBps on 800MHz RAMBUS
* Still has headroom to grow
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Re:Good and bad news

[hazydave]

>RDRAM on the other hand can run up to 800 MHz. The heat sync looks rather cute, but the memory >is tragically flawed by it's miniscule 16 bit bus (as opposed to the 64 bit SDRAM bus to the front side system bus). If you take a look, you'll find that the 64-bit FSB on today's P6 machines is simply a reaction to this architectural feature of the P6 bus. The SDRAM chips themselves are usually 8 or 16-bit wide devices, ganged to deliver a 64-bit bus. You can't do this same ganging on Rambus as easily, but you can certainly support several Rambus channels for fewer controller chip pins than you need for a 64-bit SDRAM bus. Today, it's not necessary -- a 100MHz P6 bus is only going to use about 1/2 the bandwidth of one Rambus channel. So this is not the doom you think. What Rambus buys for Intel, more than anything, is an easy way to move memory off the P6 bus. This will allow more I/O efficient system chips, as PCI and AGP now can have a direct channel to memory that doesn't get directly in the way of P6 activity. So even if the PIII can only use 800-900MB/s on the 1600MB/s Rambus channel, with proper buffering in the North Bridge chip, AGP and PCI will get a piece of this without conflicting as much with the CPU. This is also what you get with the EV6 bus, though in this case, by definition. And of course, Rambus isn't the only way. You can get the same bandwith with one Direct Rambus channel, a 64-bit DDR-SDRAM bus, or a 128-bit SDRAM bus (a staple on Alpha machines for years). The problem is doubling this. Two Direct Rambus channels are practically a no-brainer. 128-bit bus SDRAM-DDR might be possible in modern BGA packaging, but it's cutting it close. A 256-bit plain old SDRAM bus is not going to happen in commodity PCs. Now double it again. This is why Intel's been interested in Rambus.

Re:Blame it on the quake?

[R. Anthony]

The reason the prices got so high this year was because of the quake in Taiwan.

Not so. I was following the market closely before during and after the quake. I used corsair PC 133 128 MB as a marker, as it uses Micron DRAM which is not produced in Taiwan, and in no way would be effected by the quake (it also happend to be the brand I choose and now own, due to it's superior quality). Here is a timeline of the price spikes:

I chose direct.multiwave.com (wholesaler) as my test bed.

Monday (prior to quake): $297

Sept 22nd (day of the quake, wednesday): $297

Sept 24th $297

Sept 29th: $358

Oct 7th: $372

So you see, the prices were already at $300 before the quake. The subsequent rises could be attributed to Micron raising the price of DRAM to over $16 after the 22th, the day of the quake.

Re:Rambus will not die

[overshoot]

Hate to break the news, but the problem isn't really with the Camino north bridge chip. It's a signal integrity problem with the Rambus system architecture. Nasty combination of crosstalk and a resonant mode in the data lines that takes received data out of signaling spec (the line fails to cross above the logic threshold when the RAM is sending a HIGH.)
Intel is taking the fall on this one as though it's a silicon problem because it doesn't really matter where the problem is, the 820-based product isn't going to ship. Inside of Intel there's a big bloodletting going on between the engineers and the suits, because the suits are having a hard time dealing with the concept that there are some things that can't be changed by management fiat and the engineers aren't real amused by egos under the delusion that they can order back the tide.
There's been some good discussion on this over on SI-LIST