Long-Delayed Rambus Machines May Show at Comdex

Sokie writes "IBM, H-P, Micron, and Dell all plan to unveil Rambus based machines at the upcoming Comdex in Las Vegas, NV according to C|Net News. Intel, however, won't confirm that the 820 chipset will be out by then. I can just imagine the heads that would roll if Intel postponed the release again, the OEMs are still probably a bit grumpy after last time."

Comments

Re:Rambus doesn't blow your mind

[David Greene]

This has been true for a long, long time.

Writing a piece of code to run well on a Cray or Convex is not easy. You need to worry about all sorts of nasties like NUMA, messaging speed and so forth. Even non-parallel code must be concerned about I/O time. Databases have used their own raw partitions and caching schemes for years.

Even some PC software is written with the memory heirarchy in mind. You want your working set to fit in the cache, page table or whatever. RAMBUS just presents a new organization for which to optimize. Writing good code that takes advantage of the hardware makes a big difference. It's for this reason that programmers need to understand the hardware they're working with.

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Rambus, DDR-SDRAM and the Athlon....

[Dextius Alphaeus]

DDR-SDRAM 's capable FSB speed = 266mhz

Athlon 's current FSB = 200mhz (to be raised to 266 once a chipset is created to support DDR)

RAMBUS 's capable FSB speed = 400mhz ? (there is a less powerfull version that will not allow 133mhz fsb speeds, which I don't understand)

Intel's current mobo FSB = 133mhz
Athlon's current mobo FSB = 200mhz (on the CPU bus, but can take full advantate of the 133mhz memory)

The big problem right now for AMD is the fact that Intel has their L2 cache integrated on the die, and will allow their processors to ramp up in speed without the degredation of L2 speed (which will occur with the athlon).

AMD needs to get on die L2 soon, the 1/2, 1/3 divider for processor memory is really bad news. The fact is, that without the "celeron" tested technology, the new coppermine processors wouldn't be near as fast as they AREN'T..

I own a p3-550 right now, I will not buy anything, until the hardware manufacturers get over this little war over memory (and those poor people in Taiwan get their country back in %100 order).

One last note... Asus not releasing Athlon mobo's.. what the heck more does the justice department need to nail intel with unfair business practices? This is ridiculous, AMD is being forced farther into the red because nobody is willing to step up to intel?!

What a sorry state of affairs we are in right now...

-Dextius Alphaeus