and this shit happens. I have a cable modem since 72 hours ago, and so far it rocks--I dl'd the 2.4.9 Linux kernel (26MB) in 2 minutes. The service is through Comcast but it uses @home's network, gateway, DNS, and mail servers. I hope this is fixed; once you've had broadband, you can't go back.
Even the most pro-AMD detractors of the P-4 seem to agree: The one thing keeping the P-4 in the race against the Athlon is it's incredible memory bandwidth. For once, Rambus isn't being gated by a 133MHz FSB--the P-4's frontside bus runs at 400MHz, which is PC800 RDRAM's "native" speed. Read any of the reviews on the P-4 and see if any of them are talking about RDRAM latency now. Dual-channel RDRAM delivers 3 times the memory bandwidth that PC2100 (266MHz) DDR-SDRAM delivers on the AMD760 chipset.
This is why the P-4 dominates LINPACK, STREAM and all other memory-intensive benchmarks.
The irony is that Intel CEO Craig Barrett whined in the press a while back about relying on a technology (Rambus) that "gated" your performance. It's now pretty clear that previous Intel chipsets were "gating" RDRAM's performance.
Another interesting part of Tom's original benchmark was where he mentions in passing that he had successfully overclocked the P-4's FSB to 125MHz (on an Asus P4T board). With the FSB @ 125Mhz, the RDRAM is running at 1GHz, a pretty nice 25% overclock, the equivalent of running DDR-2100 SDRAM (266Mhz) at PC2625 speeds (333MHz). Dual RDRAM channels @ 1GHz deliver 4GB/sec of memory bandwidth to a 2GHz P-4. Even ovclocked, PC2100 can't even do 1/2 that--the data lines are double-clocked, but the address lines are not. Most of the performance improvement claimed by DDR is due to raising the Athlon's FSB to 133Mhz (double-clocked to 266Mhz) from 100Mhz. Wait until you see some benchmarks on the VIA KT133A chipset and compare them to the AMD750; you will be wondering what, exactly, DDR is doing for you over PC133 SDRAM.
That is a serious advantage for the P-4, despite it's other shortcomings on legacy apps. You can't overclock any AMD-based chipset for Athlon by more than 10%--the timing tollerances on the EV6 bus are just too close. Thank god you can still unlock the multipliers or overclocking an Athlon would be almost impossible.
At the end of the day, Moore's law says that we are going to see 12GHz CPUs by 2005 (or a 1GHz CPU will cost less than $40). The Pentium-4 is a step in that direction--a die shrink to.13 micron should take them very close to 4GHz by 2003. I look forward to AMD reponse in the Clawhammer (and AMD first RDRAM-based chipset) by mid-2002.
The chopstick was "invented" (how can you "invent" two sticks??) because more than a millenium ago, all of the land north of the Huang He was deforested. The chinese had the first energy shortage--a lack of long-burning fuel. To avoid food poisoning and parasites from under-cooked meat, they devised a method of cooking that required very little fuel, aka, The Wok. They could use a grass-fed fire, or small bits of wood, cut the meat up very small, and concentrate the heat in the bottom of the Wok where the chunks of flesh could be thoroughly cooked very quickly (not hours of roasting a haunch over an open fire).
So, necessity was the mother of invention. It wasn't about manners. It was about not being killed from undercooking.
What do you get when you combine an egomaniac with a paranoid schitzophrenic? I dunno, but it smokes french cigs and wants you to touch his monkey.
Tommy claims that the Pentium-3 1.13GHz is unstable, and he can't get benchmarks to run. Why? Because the Pentium-3 demolishes Athlon, and costs less. So he made up this little story. Ach!
As you can see, some other Hardware sites had NO problem running the 1.13GHz Pentium-3.
SDRAM wasn't even a product until 1993. Rambus patents were filed in 1990. It's all right here:
http://www.dramreview.com
Don't forget that most Rambus patents were filed in 1990 and the Jedec meetings in question occured in the "mid 90's".
Yes, there were some revisions to the patent applications (which were not approved until 1999, if you can believe that) that came after some of the JEDEC meetings. But the fundamental claims of the patents could NOT have come from the JEDEC meetings, because the patents in question were filed YEARS earlier.
Also, some of the 1990 patents cover characteristics of "plain old" SDRAM. Well, SDRAM didn't appear until 1993, which is the basis for Rambus claiming royalty rights on SDRAM, and which chronology also forms the basis for claims to BACK ROYALTIES for much of the memory production not only in the future but which has also occured back to 1993.
The fact that Hitachi and Toshiba have settled should tell you something: the Rambus case is very, very strong. Hitachi didn't face trial for 2 years, and did not face ITC action until next march.
The Rambus royalties are 1% to 2% for RDRAM, up to 5% for some other items (network controllers, for example). Everyone makes it sound like the royalties are crippling. They average 1-2% and decrease with volume, depending on the royalty agreement and stock offsets. If Dram prices go up 50%, please ask the manufacturers why a 1-2% royalty caused it.
Does anyone realize that for years (and perhaps still) Texas Instruments collected similar or larger royalties on virtually all memeory just because they held some patents on packaging silicon IC's in DIP packages ?
Royalties are not at all unusual in this business, almost all products carry either some cash royalties or some "cross licensing" royalties (in which no cash changes hand because two companies have signed mutual agreements in which each can use the other's patents royalty free).
I'm tired of reading articles trashing Rambus, making them sound greedy and Machevellian for doing something that all high-tech companies do every day. If you are a high-tech company, you ARE ALSO an IP company. It's just that Rambus is EXCLUSIVELY an IP company. But that doesn't give people a right to trash them for collecting a 1-2% royalty on technology which they developed prior to anyone else.
BTW, Rambus CEO Geoff Tate is a former AMD VP. AMD is a Rambus partner.
SDRAM wasn't even a product until 1993. Rambus patents were filed in 1990. It's all right here:
http://www.dramreview.com
Don't forget that the Rambus patents were filed in 1990 and the Jedec meetings in question occured in the "mid 90's".
Yes, there were some revisions to the patent applications (which were not approved until 1999, if you can believe that) that came after some of the JEDEC meetings. But the fundamental claims of the patents could NOT have come from the JEDEC meetings, because the patents in question were filed YEARS earlier.
Also, some of the 1990 patents cover characteristics of "plain old" SDRAM. Well, SDRAM didn't appear until 1993, which is the basis for Rambus claiming royalty rights on SDRAM, and which chronology also forms the basis for claims to BACK ROYALTIES for much of the memory production not only in the future but which has also occured back to 1993.
It's impossible to say with certainty what WILL happen in the courts, but don't kid yourself, the Rambus case is very, very strong.
The Rambus royalties are 1.5% to 2% for RDRAM, up to 5% for some other items (network controllers, for example).
Everyone makes it sound like the royalties are crippling. They average 1-2% and decrease with volume, depending on the royalty agreement.
Does anyone realize that for years (and perhaps still) Texas Instruments collected similar or larger royalties on virtually all memeory just because they held some patents on packaging silicon IC's in DIP packages ?
Royalties are not at all unusual in this business, almost all products carry either some cash royalties or some "cross licensing" royalties (in which no cash changes hand because two companies have signed mutual agreements in which each can use the other's patents royalty free).
I'm tired of reading articles trashing Rambus, making them sound greedy and Machevellian for doing something that all high-tech companies do every day. If you are a high-tech company, you ARE ALSO an IP company. It's just that Rambus is EXCLUSIVELY an IP company. But that doesn't give people a right to trash them for collecting a 2% royalty on technology which they developed prior to anyone else.
There is a war between Intel and AMD. It is for the future of not only the desktop PC architecture, but the server architecture and the soon-to-be-booming gaming console/internet appliance architecture. The basis for this war is about as complex as the alliance structure that resulted in WWII. The catalytic event that launched this conflict was the Anti-trust case (and victory) against Microsoft.
Microsoft had effectively controlled the architecture by controlling the OS environment. This will soon be over. The next big thing will be embedded OS's in gaming consoles. Intel and AMD are vying to dominate that market.
The stuff you see on Tom's Hardware and Anandtech are distractions. Those are feints and skirmishes aimed at press ink and enthusiast mindshare. No one ever said that the world is fair or that the best technology has to win. Rambus IS the best technology, and the only DRAM technology that can scale right now to keep up with Moore's law. DDR is a legacy bandaid.
The real war is being fought between AMD and Intel among the DRAM manufacturers and silicon foundries of Asia--Korea, Taiwan and Japan. The game is to get AMD and Intel to pay for DRAM conversions and partnerships. DRAM manufacturing has been a VERY marginal profit business for the past decade--look at the consolidation that has taken place in Japan and Korea. The DDR vs. RDRAM war give the industry a chance to make a huge amount of money. They are all holding these hostage to the highest bidder --AMD vs. Intel.
This is why the X-Box victory for Intel was such a big deal. It was the opening salvo in the war. Personally, I believe that the X-box may never be built. But the announcement of Intel's (and Nvidia's) victory has implications for the DRAM wars--it showed that Intel was willing to build the CPUs for the X-box for free, or at cost. Why? To deny the market to AMD, of course, but even more importantly: to ensure that the next generation of Win32-based games for PCs and consoles would use Intel's SSE extensions and architecture enhancements, not AMD's 3D-NOW. Intel could do this because THEY ARE HUGE--they have the fab space to make at-cost coppermine chips. It gives intel a production base through 2004 for.18-m process coppermine cores while other plants are converted to.13+copper Willamette and McKinley cores. AMD does not have the fab capacity to do this while maximizing profits. It's fab capacity is better used for Athlon/T-bird/Duron cores and flash memory.
Taiwan has positioned it's quasi-government-owned semiconductor plants to play the crucial part in the next phase of the war. You may notice that Samsung, and Micron, Hyundai, NEC and the other DRAMurai constantly issue conflicting statements about their production plans for DDR vs. RDRAM. This is not just bad reporting. This is a strategy: they are asking Intel and AMD, "how bad do you want it?" "How much are you willing to pay?"
The main pressure has to be on the stronger contestant: Intel. If they pressured AMD too much, they would lose leverage over Intel's wallet. They are using upstart AMD as a stalking horse to get Intel to pay for the conversion to RDRAM production and guarantee profits. Very nice profits from producing RDRAM.
The thing is, consortiums and cartels are weak things. Intel is constantly probing the fissures in these relationship. One weak link is Hyundai --it desperately needs cash, and Intel is dangling $200 Million for RDRAM production. But the weakest link is Taiwan. Taiwan's companies (Mosel-Vitec excepted) are not part of the seven Dramurai. None of Taiwan's main semiconductor companies design DRAM. These companies are also the tightest-knit of any of the major Asia companies. Samsung and Hyundai compete fiercely. NEC, Toshiba, Hitachi, and Fujitsu compete fiercely. And Taiwan holds a unique position in the semiconductor world: 80% of the contract foundry/fab capacity in the world is on Taiwan. When VIA-a fabless design shop--needs to build it's chipsets, it turns to TSMC, UMC and Winbond, Taiwan's home-grown, government-sponsored foundries. When Nvidia or 3DFX need a place to make their graphics chips, they turn to Taiwan. When one of the DRAM manufacturers needs quick capacity, they turn to Taiwan. These are state-of-the-art foundries, using.13-micron and copper-interconnections if required.
Below the Taiwan government, there is a huge conglomerate called Formosa Plastics Group. It's founder is probably the least known and wealthiest billionare in Asia. Under the FPG umbrella are subsidiaries like VIA and TSMC, and also "strategic partners" like FIC--interlocking boards, cross-investment, patent sharing, the works. The Taiwan group is just waiting for Intel to pull out it's wallet, IMHO. VIA would love to settle the Intel patent infringement suit and ITC complaint. It desperately needs a partnership with Chipzilla for it's own (formerly Cyrix) CPU plans to succeed. So, the news [that VIA is working on an RDRAM chipset] needs to be read in this light--it is NOT yet a victory by Intel. It is a probe, a signal by VIA that it is ready to talk.
VIA does NOT need a Rambus license to design and build a RDRAM chipset. The license needs to be held by the FOUNDRY. TSMC, UMC, and Winbond ARE ALREADY RAMBUS PARTNERS. The foundry PAYS the ROYALTY. It's all there at http://www.rambus.com.
So the war is far from over, but I think that Intel is very close to playing the Taiwan option. That is the whole point of the lawsuit against VIA: not to break them, but to leverage them against AMD. VIA had assumed a KEY position as AMD's partner. AMD NEEDED VIA to build the chipsets for Athlon and thunderbird/duron, and to build the DDR-SDRAM chipsets as well. THIS IS NOW IN DOUBT: Aces' hardware had a story a few days ago about the fallout between AMD and VIA over the KX133 chipsets incompatibility with the Thunderbird and Duron CPUs. AMD now says that the first DDR-SDRAM chipset will NOT be from VIA, but from ALi. Acer Aladdin (ALi) is one of the few big Taiwan companies that is not connected with FPG. This is a desperation play by AMD. ALi is not even in VIA's league.
DDR-SDRAM's share of the PC main memory market will be virtually zero this year and the first 1/2 of next year. If you look beyond the BS, Look at the KX133 chipset for Athlon. It came out in January. It is now June. You still can't get one from any of the major vendors like Gateway or Compaq; they are still using motherboards with the obsolescent AMD750 chipset(no AGP 4X, no PC133 DRAM, incompatible with GeForce cards, crappy HDD controllers). The taletale is to go to Gateway or Compaq or any of the others and look at the system specs: if they say AGP-2X or PC100 SDRAM, it's the old AMD750 chipset. That's SIX MONTHS.
Realistically, that means that the first volume shipments of ANY DDR-SDRAM computers won't be before March 2001. IMHO, June 2001 is more likely. This assumes that they work. I'm getting suspicious that the DDR-SDRAM meetings are not already demonstrating production chipsets. IF DDR-SDRAM WAS A SLAM DUNK EASY THING, SOMEBODY WOULD HAVE ALREADY DONE IT. You would have seen a high-end workstation company like SGI, SUN, DEC/APLHA/COMPAQ, INTEGRAPH, or SOMEBODY do it by now. This is not the slamdunk they want you to think it is.
Assuming DDR-SDRAM can be produced for volume system sales, it should be usable in any application that today uses SDRAM--obviously video cards, but also other applications. I still think it is the last trick they are going to pull out of SDRAM; you will probably see seom systems produced, and then they are done.
When Willamette is introduced, I think it will answer a lot of questions. We will see what the best semiconductor design company on the planet (Intel) can do with a from-the-ground-up platform intended to take full advantage of RDRAM's unmatched bandwidth. If Willamette delivers, I think that the DRAM companies will produce RDRAM in volume, but it is going to cost Intel dearly for the misteps of the past year. The DRAM industry is not going to risk another i820 fiasco--Intel is going to have to write them an insurance policy.
Intel may hire dolts, but Dell seems to have a little more on the ball--DELL DOES NOT SHIP i820 or i840-BASED SYSTEMS WITH SDRAM. sheesh! If you want SDRAM from Dell, you will get a BX or i810 board--or an SMP workstation board designed for SDRAM.
funny how Nintendo (fer christsake) and Sony seem to have had no problem designing around RDRAM.
Let me try to clarify a few things. There are 25 million shares of Rambus stock outstanding, so a million shares is 1/25th. The company is going to split in mid-June 4:1, so it will soon be an even smaller proportion. Even if Intel could sell the stock for $200/share (it closed at $167 today), it would amount to $200 million--a drop in the bucket for Intel's bottom line. Intel is not about to risk it's competitiveness for some stock warrants. It's got enough trouble already.
If you would like to know why intel chose Rambus instead of DDR-SDRAM, check out this article and this one.
If you like Tom Pabst better, look at his new review of GeForce2 GTS cards and note what platform he used for the comparison: Intel OR840 motherboard with RDRAM.
If you like Anandtech better, look at his "Dream System": Intel OR840 + SMP CuMine + RDRAM.
(btw, for 1/2 of the $11,000 price he quotes, you could get a Dell Precision Workstation 420 with a better (Nvidia Quadro) video card, and faster processors (866Mhz vs. 733MHz).
So sure, blame Intel for stepping on it's crank multiple times in the past 6 months. But try to understand the technology too.
Please. If you don't think that Tom has an anti-Intel bias (read Arstechnia's commentary on it) than you are not anchored to reality. Read something written by a real semiconductor expert:
Rambus is an IP company; they only thing they make is money. RDRAM is made by some little mom and pop shops you may have heard of: Samsung, Hyundai, Toshiba, NEC, Infineon (Siemens), and Micron.
Uh, because of RDRAM's "granularity", it was CHEAPER for Sony to use it over SDRAM or DDR. Read something written by someone other than Tom Pabst--btw, where did he get his EE???
Re:Only the paranoid survive...
on
Intel Roadmap
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· Score: 1
RDRAM has been in production for only 14 weeks. 90% of it is made by Samsung--about 1 million chips/month. Almost all of Toshiba's production is going to PlayStationIIs. Hyundai, NEC and even Micron (which is heavy in DDR) have had their parts accepted and certified only in the past three weeks. Samsung says that by Q4, they will produce 10 million chips a month. Hyundai, NEC, and Toshiba expect to triple output over the same period. Meanwhile, the price of a Dell RDRAM-equipped PC has fallen by 13% in just the past week. The margin over a PC-133 PC is now $200 (with 128MB). DataQuest says that by the 2002, RDRAM will be 57% of all desktop memory.
This is very hairy stuff--it cleaves right between the Intel vs. AMD wars and the Sony vs. Sega wars. There are billions of dollars at stake, and strategic business plans hinging on the outcome. Mistrust EVERYTHING you read or hear on this issue. (Disclosure--I own Rambus, AMD, Sony, and Intel stock). Unless you are a patent lawyer with an EE in semiconductor design, you probably don't know what you are talking about, let alone how it will turn out. For a start, read this:
My Opinion (see above--I'm neither): Hitachi's countersuit charging Rambus with Sherman Antitrust Act Violation looks extrememly weak. They essentially admitted that Rambus' patents are valid, and that Hitachi used the technology disclosed in under NDA. So Hitachi is bascially claiming that a company with $45 million in sales and $8 Billion in market cap is a monopoly akin to the evil old Standard Oil or IBM. HAHAHAHAHA!
The rest of the DRAM industry is going to be leaning heavily on HIT--which wants to sell its DRAM business to NEC--to settle before trial, and not test whether Rambus' patents extend to DDR and SDRAM. Rambus has said that if it goes to trial, they will not license ANYTHING to Hitachi. Heads Rambus wins, tails Hitachi loses.
Moreover, Rambus costs $1,000 for 128MB. Check out:
http://www.mushkin.com
..one of the few online dealers where you can even find it. Intel it betting a LOT on RAMBUS, and pissing off everyone with their flaky i820 and i840 chipsets. Check out how many big OEMs now offer Athlon system. Intel has really left the door open for AMD. If AMD can get to market with a chipset that supports DDR-SDRAM, 4X-AGP, and SMP, they will put a serious hurt on Intel.
The one thing that will keep Rambus Memory, Inc. afloat is the fact that Intel supports them, and it will be the memory in Play Station-2s. But if the price does not fall down to somewhere within the range of DDR-SDRAM (which already exists for video cards) it is going to fail in the desktop market and take Intel's i820, i840, Pentium-III, and Williamette with it.
I'm really looking forward to buying an Athlon box as soon as SMP and DDR-SDRAM support are a reality. The VIA KX133 chipset is already a very nice stable platform for uniprocessor/SDRAM setups.
Good post. I'm not sure what I want Linux to be when it grows up, but I hope it doesn't become "Just as good as Windows or Macintosh."
I think the keys are OpenSource and different distributions. First, build a dominant position in the enterprise server market on the basis of reliability, security, reliability, scalability, reliability, and speed. Robust SMP support, journaling file systems, Firewire support, Ultra3 SCSI RAID device support--focus on these first.
Linux's opensourceness enables a wide range of distributions with different strengths--we're getting pretty close with Caldera's OpenLinux and Corel. RedHat seems to have cleaned up the buggy graphical install since 6.1--I just installed 6.2Beta and it was not challenging at all; it just worked. The GUI is still not what it needs to be but has come so far in the past year that I'm optimistic...
Finally, follow the Crusoe into the web appliance market. I think Linux could have a real edge here, where the UI can be designed from scratch, not depending on current paradigms.
So, all you need is an OC-3. Is this part of the typical DVD pirate's took kit now?
How did you (or your friend) save the file on the other end? What kind of file system allowed you to store the entire movie--say, 4-5GB. I'm limited to 2GB files right now under win or Linux.
Why would anyone use this method to pirate a DVD movie when they could just copy the disk for a lot less money, and much less chance of getting caught?
good catch...my Dad was in OCS (V-12 program) with Valenti in '42-43, and my Dad is 79. Valenti's is no boomer, but a "Greatest Generation" guy.
He's a lobbyist--he doesn't set policy for Hollywood studios on things like DeCSS. But if you can change his mind, he can influence the industry's mindset. He did this in the 1970s over film ratings, convincing them to do something in their own interest rather than risk government ratings.
--Write column bashing Linux --Get flamed by Linuxphiles for his lack of clues --Write another column detailing the worst flames --Write third colume rebutting chosen points --Collect check from Microsoft
This allows him to be the center of a controversy for very little work. How else is he going to stay relevant? He is clueness on purpose.
stf "...for the average desktop user, NT presents a reliable cohesive environment."
what the heck does "cohesive" mean in this context? It does what they expect it to do? (crash...just kidding).
I'd say that NT is good for the enterprise environment, but not for the average desktop user. It may be more reliable than Win9x (YMMV), but it has very limited support for multimedia, a much more restricted hardware base--no PnP, no PCI steering, no USB, no AGP--and is VERY unforgiving of changes in the hardware configuration. Heck, RH6.1 is waaay more forgiving, and Kudzu actually works at detecting new hardware (if only it played nicer with isapnp).
For the average desktop user, Win98 presents an equally reliable cohesive environment (whatever cohesive means).
Here are the simple instructions for upgrading WinNT hardware:
Replace HDD? Reinstall WinNT... Replace Motherboard? Reinstall... Replace Video Card? Reinstall.. Installed new software that modified any networking or display settings? Reapply service pack X.
Win2k is a quantum leap--I've heard almost nothing bad about it (other than it is late) even from most Linux zealots.
You should give VMWare another look--I don't know how long ago you tried it, but the released version for Linux (1.1.2, built 364) is quite usable. Version 2.0Beta is extremely nice--more stable, quicker, better SVGA drivers, and improved disk performance. It runs without a hitch on my system (RH6.1)--never hangs, never segfaults. Word and Excel 2000 run at near-native speeds. VMWare still has some issues when it comes to booting off raw SCSI disks (careful typing here!), but is a very usable product.
I agree that OS emulation is not the answer--probably something more along the lines of Transmeta may be. But VMWare works pretty well--especially with the 2.2.12 or later Linux kernels.
Slashdot Mirror
and this shit happens. I have a cable modem since 72 hours ago, and so far it rocks--I dl'd the 2.4.9 Linux kernel (26MB) in 2 minutes. The service is through Comcast but it uses @home's network, gateway, DNS, and mail servers. I hope this is fixed; once you've had broadband, you can't go back.
InQuest is a paid "Marketing Consulting" company. The article is a crock, nicely documented here:
p hp ?message_id=30014614
http://www.aceshardware.com/board/general/read.
Go look at John Carmack's plan. He's beeg asked this about a million times. There are NO SSE optimizations in Quake 3, let alone SSE2 optimizations.
Where you you AMDroids get this crap?
Even the most pro-AMD detractors of the P-4 seem to agree: The one thing keeping the P-4 in the race against the Athlon is it's incredible memory bandwidth. For once, Rambus isn't being gated by a 133MHz FSB--the P-4's frontside bus runs at 400MHz, which is PC800 RDRAM's "native" speed. Read any of the reviews on the P-4 and see if any of them are talking about RDRAM latency now. Dual-channel RDRAM delivers 3 times the memory bandwidth that PC2100 (266MHz) DDR-SDRAM delivers on the AMD760 chipset.
.13 micron should take them very close to 4GHz by 2003. I look forward to AMD reponse in the Clawhammer (and AMD first RDRAM-based chipset) by mid-2002.
This is why the P-4 dominates LINPACK, STREAM and all other memory-intensive benchmarks.
The irony is that Intel CEO Craig Barrett whined in the press a while back about relying on a technology (Rambus) that "gated" your performance. It's now pretty clear that previous Intel chipsets were "gating" RDRAM's performance.
Another interesting part of Tom's original benchmark was where he mentions in passing that he had successfully overclocked the P-4's FSB to 125MHz (on an Asus P4T board). With the FSB @ 125Mhz, the RDRAM is running at 1GHz, a pretty nice 25% overclock, the equivalent of running DDR-2100 SDRAM (266Mhz) at PC2625 speeds (333MHz). Dual RDRAM channels @ 1GHz deliver 4GB/sec of memory bandwidth to a 2GHz P-4. Even ovclocked, PC2100 can't even do 1/2 that--the data lines are double-clocked, but the address lines are not. Most of the performance improvement claimed by DDR is due to raising the Athlon's FSB to 133Mhz (double-clocked to 266Mhz) from 100Mhz. Wait until you see some benchmarks on the VIA KT133A chipset and compare them to the AMD750; you will be wondering what, exactly, DDR is doing for you over PC133 SDRAM.
That is a serious advantage for the P-4, despite it's other shortcomings on legacy apps. You can't overclock any AMD-based chipset for Athlon by more than 10%--the timing tollerances on the EV6 bus are just too close. Thank god you can still unlock the multipliers or overclocking an Athlon would be almost impossible.
At the end of the day, Moore's law says that we are going to see 12GHz CPUs by 2005 (or a 1GHz CPU will cost less than $40). The Pentium-4 is a step in that direction--a die shrink to
The chopstick was "invented" (how can you "invent" two sticks??) because more than a millenium ago, all of the land north of the Huang He was deforested. The chinese had the first energy shortage--a lack of long-burning fuel. To avoid food poisoning and parasites from under-cooked meat, they devised a method of cooking that required very little fuel, aka, The Wok. They could use a grass-fed fire, or small bits of wood, cut the meat up very small, and concentrate the heat in the bottom of the Wok where the chunks of flesh could be thoroughly cooked very quickly (not hours of roasting a haunch over an open fire).
So, necessity was the mother of invention. It wasn't about manners. It was about not being killed from undercooking.
http://www.electronicnews.com/news/4466-242NewsDet ail.asp
8 055.html
A little wager: They won't settle, and Rambus will win in court. Not fair, but patent law seldom is.
BTW, with regard to MU and Rambus, it's personal:
http://www.wsaccess.com/theStreet/tech/semis/72
Tommy claims that the Pentium-3 1.13GHz is unstable, and he can't get benchmarks to run. Why?
Because the Pentium-3 demolishes Athlon, and costs less. So he made up this little story. Ach!
As you can see, some other Hardware sites had NO problem running the 1.13GHz Pentium-3.
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html? i=1290
http://www.shar kyextreme.com/hardware/reviews/cpu/pentium3_1x13gh z/
http://firingsquad.gamer s.com/hardware/p3-1133/default.asp
They even ran it on 440BX and VIA boards! Firing Squad OVERCLOCKED it. But Tommy's was broken, really, and it must be a SCANDAL for Intel.
Here's a scandal for you--AMD's stock price is going to cross Intel's this week, heading the wrong direction! No wonder Dr. Tommy is having problems!
SDRAM wasn't even a product until 1993. Rambus patents were filed in 1990. It's all right here:
http://www.dramreview.com
Don't forget that most Rambus patents were filed in 1990 and the Jedec meetings in question occured in the "mid 90's".
Yes, there were some revisions to the patent applications (which were not approved until 1999, if you can believe that) that came after some of the JEDEC meetings. But the fundamental claims of the patents could NOT have come from the JEDEC meetings, because the patents in question were filed YEARS earlier.
Also, some of the 1990 patents cover characteristics of "plain old" SDRAM. Well, SDRAM didn't appear until 1993, which is the basis for Rambus claiming royalty rights on SDRAM, and which chronology also forms the basis for claims to BACK ROYALTIES for much of the memory production not only in the future but which has also occured back to 1993.
The fact that Hitachi and Toshiba have settled should tell you something: the Rambus case is very, very strong. Hitachi didn't face trial for 2 years, and did not face ITC action until next march.
The Rambus royalties are 1% to 2% for RDRAM, up to 5% for some other items (network controllers, for example). Everyone makes it sound like the royalties are crippling. They average 1-2% and decrease with volume, depending on the royalty agreement and stock offsets. If Dram prices go up 50%, please ask the manufacturers why a 1-2% royalty caused it.
Does anyone realize that for years (and perhaps still) Texas Instruments collected similar or larger royalties on virtually all memeory just because they held some patents on packaging silicon IC's in DIP packages ?
Royalties are not at all unusual in this business, almost all products carry either some cash royalties or some "cross licensing" royalties (in which no cash changes hand because two companies have signed mutual agreements in which each can use the other's patents royalty free).
I'm tired of reading articles trashing Rambus, making them sound greedy and Machevellian for doing something that all high-tech companies do every day. If you are a high-tech company, you ARE ALSO an IP company. It's just that Rambus is EXCLUSIVELY an IP company. But that doesn't give people a right to trash them for collecting a 1-2% royalty on technology which they developed prior to anyone else.
BTW, Rambus CEO Geoff Tate is a former AMD VP. AMD is a Rambus partner.
SDRAM wasn't even a product until 1993. Rambus patents were filed in 1990. It's all right here:
http://www.dramreview.com
Don't forget that the Rambus patents were filed in 1990 and the Jedec meetings in question occured in the "mid 90's".
Yes, there were some revisions to the patent applications (which were not approved until 1999, if you can believe that) that came after some of the JEDEC meetings. But the fundamental claims of the patents could NOT have come from the JEDEC meetings, because the patents in question were filed YEARS earlier.
Also, some of the 1990 patents cover characteristics of "plain old" SDRAM. Well, SDRAM didn't appear until 1993, which is the basis for Rambus claiming royalty rights on SDRAM, and which chronology also forms the basis for claims to BACK ROYALTIES for much of the memory production not only in the future but which has also occured back to 1993.
It's impossible to say with certainty what WILL happen in the courts, but don't kid yourself, the Rambus case is very, very strong.
The Rambus royalties are 1.5% to 2% for RDRAM, up to 5% for some other items (network controllers, for example).
Everyone makes it sound like the royalties are crippling. They average 1-2% and decrease with volume, depending on the royalty agreement.
Does anyone realize that for years (and perhaps still) Texas Instruments collected similar or larger royalties on virtually all memeory just because they held some patents on packaging silicon IC's in DIP packages ?
Royalties are not at all unusual in this business, almost all products carry either some cash royalties or some "cross licensing" royalties (in which no cash changes hand because two companies have signed mutual agreements in which each can use the other's patents royalty free).
I'm tired of reading articles trashing Rambus, making them sound greedy and Machevellian for doing something that all high-tech companies do every day. If you are a high-tech company, you ARE ALSO an IP company. It's just that Rambus is EXCLUSIVELY an IP company. But that doesn't give people a right to trash them for collecting a 2% royalty on technology which they developed prior to anyone else.
There is a war between Intel and AMD. It is for the future of not only the desktop PC architecture, but the server architecture and the
.18-m process coppermine cores while other plants are converted to .13+copper Willamette and McKinley cores. AMD does not have the fab capacity to do this while maximizing profits. It's fab capacity is better used for Athlon/T-bird/Duron cores and flash memory.
.13-micron and copper-interconnections if required.
soon-to-be-booming gaming console/internet appliance architecture. The basis for this war is about as complex as the alliance structure that resulted in WWII. The catalytic event that launched this conflict was the Anti-trust case (and victory) against Microsoft.
Microsoft had effectively controlled the architecture by controlling the OS environment. This will soon be over. The next big thing will be embedded OS's in gaming consoles. Intel and AMD are vying to dominate that market.
The stuff you see on Tom's Hardware and Anandtech are distractions. Those are feints and skirmishes aimed at press ink and enthusiast mindshare. No one ever said that the world is fair or that the best technology has to win. Rambus IS the best technology, and the only DRAM technology that can
scale right now to keep up with Moore's law. DDR is a legacy bandaid.
The real war is being fought between AMD and Intel among the DRAM manufacturers and silicon foundries of Asia--Korea, Taiwan and Japan. The game is to get AMD and Intel to pay for DRAM conversions and partnerships. DRAM manufacturing has been a VERY marginal profit business for the past decade--look at the consolidation that has taken place in Japan and Korea. The DDR vs. RDRAM war give the industry a chance to make a huge amount of money. They are all holding these hostage to the highest bidder --AMD vs. Intel.
This is why the X-Box victory for Intel was such a big deal. It was the opening salvo in the war. Personally, I believe that the X-box may never be built. But the announcement of Intel's (and Nvidia's) victory has implications for the DRAM wars--it showed that Intel was willing to build the CPUs for the X-box for free, or at cost. Why? To deny the market to AMD, of course, but even more importantly: to ensure that the next generation of Win32-based games for PCs and consoles would use Intel's SSE extensions and architecture enhancements, not AMD's 3D-NOW. Intel could do this because THEY ARE HUGE--they have the fab space to make at-cost coppermine chips. It gives intel a production base through 2004 for
Taiwan has positioned it's quasi-government-owned semiconductor plants to play the crucial part in the next phase of the war. You may notice that
Samsung, and Micron, Hyundai, NEC and the other DRAMurai constantly issue conflicting statements about their production plans for DDR vs. RDRAM. This is not just bad reporting. This is a strategy: they are asking Intel and AMD, "how bad do you want it?" "How much are you willing to pay?"
The main pressure has to be on the stronger contestant: Intel. If they pressured AMD too much, they would lose leverage over Intel's wallet. They are using upstart AMD as a stalking horse to get Intel to pay for the conversion to RDRAM production and guarantee profits. Very nice profits from producing RDRAM.
The thing is, consortiums and cartels are weak things. Intel is constantly probing the fissures in these relationship. One weak link is Hyundai --it desperately needs cash, and Intel is dangling $200 Million for RDRAM production. But the weakest link is Taiwan. Taiwan's companies (Mosel-Vitec excepted) are not part of the seven Dramurai. None of Taiwan's main semiconductor companies design DRAM. These companies are also the tightest-knit of any of the major Asia companies. Samsung and Hyundai compete fiercely. NEC, Toshiba, Hitachi, and Fujitsu compete fiercely. And Taiwan holds a unique position in the semiconductor world: 80% of the contract foundry/fab capacity in the world is on Taiwan. When VIA-a fabless design shop--needs to build it's chipsets, it turns to TSMC, UMC and Winbond, Taiwan's home-grown, government-sponsored foundries. When Nvidia or 3DFX need a place to make their graphics chips, they turn to Taiwan. When one of the DRAM manufacturers needs quick capacity, they turn to Taiwan. These are state-of-the-art foundries, using
Below the Taiwan government, there is a huge conglomerate called Formosa Plastics Group. It's founder is probably the least known and wealthiest
billionare in Asia. Under the FPG umbrella are subsidiaries like VIA and TSMC, and also "strategic partners" like FIC--interlocking boards, cross-investment, patent sharing, the works. The Taiwan group is just waiting for Intel to pull out it's wallet, IMHO. VIA would love to settle the Intel patent infringement suit and ITC complaint. It desperately needs a partnership with Chipzilla for it's own (formerly Cyrix) CPU plans to succeed. So, the news [that VIA is working on an RDRAM chipset] needs to be read in this light--it is NOT yet a victory by Intel. It is a probe, a signal by VIA that it is ready to talk.
VIA does NOT need a Rambus license to design and build a RDRAM chipset. The license needs to be held by the FOUNDRY. TSMC, UMC, and Winbond ARE ALREADY RAMBUS PARTNERS. The foundry PAYS the ROYALTY. It's all there at http://www.rambus.com.
So the war is far from over, but I think that Intel is very close to playing the Taiwan option. That is the whole point of the lawsuit against VIA: not to break them, but to leverage them against AMD. VIA had assumed a KEY position as AMD's partner. AMD NEEDED VIA to build the chipsets for Athlon and thunderbird/duron, and to build the DDR-SDRAM chipsets as well. THIS IS NOW IN DOUBT: Aces' hardware had a story a few days ago about the fallout between AMD and VIA over the KX133 chipsets incompatibility with the Thunderbird and Duron CPUs. AMD now says that the first DDR-SDRAM chipset will NOT be from VIA, but from ALi. Acer Aladdin (ALi) is one of the few big Taiwan companies that is not connected with FPG. This is a desperation play by AMD. ALi is not even in VIA's league.
DDR-SDRAM's share of the PC main memory market will be virtually zero this year and the first 1/2 of next year. If you look beyond the BS, Look at the KX133 chipset for Athlon. It came out in January. It is now June. You still can't get one from any of the major vendors like Gateway or Compaq; they are still using motherboards with the obsolescent AMD750 chipset(no AGP 4X, no PC133 DRAM, incompatible with GeForce cards, crappy HDD controllers). The taletale is to go to Gateway or Compaq or any of the others and look at the system specs: if they say AGP-2X or PC100 SDRAM, it's the old AMD750 chipset. That's SIX MONTHS.
Realistically, that means that the first volume shipments of ANY DDR-SDRAM computers won't be before March 2001. IMHO, June 2001 is more likely. This assumes that they work. I'm getting suspicious that the DDR-SDRAM meetings are not already demonstrating production chipsets. IF DDR-SDRAM WAS A SLAM DUNK EASY THING, SOMEBODY WOULD HAVE ALREADY DONE IT. You would have seen a high-end workstation company like SGI, SUN, DEC/APLHA/COMPAQ, INTEGRAPH, or SOMEBODY do it by now. This is not the slamdunk they want you to think it is.
Assuming DDR-SDRAM can be produced for volume system sales, it should be usable in any application that today uses SDRAM--obviously video cards, but also other applications. I still think it is the last trick they are going to pull out of SDRAM; you will probably see seom systems produced, and then they are done.
When Willamette is introduced, I think it will answer a lot of questions. We will see what the best semiconductor design company on the planet (Intel) can do with a from-the-ground-up platform intended to take full advantage of RDRAM's unmatched bandwidth. If Willamette delivers, I think that the DRAM companies will produce RDRAM in volume, but it is going to cost Intel dearly for the misteps of the past year. The DRAM industry is not going to risk another i820 fiasco--Intel is going to have to write them an insurance policy.
Sorry this is so long. I'll just add:
Tom Pabst IS SUCK!
Gee, does somebody need a hug?
Intel may hire dolts, but Dell seems to have a little more on the ball--DELL DOES NOT SHIP i820 or i840-BASED SYSTEMS WITH SDRAM. sheesh! If you want SDRAM from Dell, you will get a BX or i810 board--or an SMP workstation board designed for SDRAM.
funny how Nintendo (fer christsake) and Sony seem to have had no problem designing around RDRAM.
If you would like to know why intel chose Rambus instead of DDR-SDRAM, check out this article
and this one.
If you like Tom Pabst better, look at his new review of GeForce2 GTS cards and note what platform he used for the comparison: Intel OR840 motherboard with RDRAM.
If you like Anandtech better, look at his "Dream System": Intel OR840 + SMP CuMine + RDRAM.
(btw, for 1/2 of the $11,000 price he quotes, you could get a Dell Precision Workstation 420 with a better (Nvidia Quadro) video card, and faster processors (866Mhz vs. 733MHz).
So sure, blame Intel for stepping on it's crank multiple times in the past 6 months. But try to understand the technology too.
Please. If you don't think that Tom has an anti-Intel bias (read Arstechnia's commentary on it) than you are not anchored to reality. Read something written by a real semiconductor expert:
W P_memory.shtml
http://www.toshiba.com/taec/components/Generic/
Dear SickF*&%,
Rambus is an IP company; they only thing they make is money. RDRAM is made by some little mom and pop shops you may have heard of: Samsung, Hyundai, Toshiba, NEC, Infineon (Siemens), and Micron.
Uh, because of RDRAM's "granularity", it was CHEAPER for Sony to use it over SDRAM or DDR. Read something written by someone other than Tom Pabst--btw, where did he get his EE???
W P_memory.shtml
http://www.toshiba.com/taec/components/Generic/
RDRAM has been in production for only 14 weeks. 90% of it is made by Samsung--about 1 million chips/month. Almost all of Toshiba's production is going to PlayStationIIs. Hyundai, NEC and even Micron (which is heavy in DDR) have had their parts accepted and certified only in the past three weeks. Samsung says that by Q4, they will produce 10 million chips a month. Hyundai, NEC, and Toshiba expect to triple output over the same period. Meanwhile, the price of a Dell RDRAM-equipped PC has fallen by 13% in just the past week. The margin over a PC-133 PC is now $200 (with 128MB). DataQuest says that by the 2002, RDRAM will be 57% of all desktop memory.
to learn more, see:
http://www.rambusite.com
This is very hairy stuff--it cleaves right between the Intel vs. AMD wars and the Sony vs. Sega wars. There are billions of dollars at stake, and strategic business plans hinging on the outcome. Mistrust EVERYTHING you read or hear on this issue. (Disclosure--I own Rambus, AMD, Sony, and Intel stock). Unless you are a patent lawyer with an EE in semiconductor design, you probably don't know what you are talking about, let alone how it will turn out. For a start, read this:
p atents.html
http://www.dramreview.com/dramrev/ip/ip_rambus_
My Opinion (see above--I'm neither): Hitachi's countersuit charging Rambus with Sherman Antitrust Act Violation looks extrememly weak. They essentially admitted that Rambus' patents are valid, and that Hitachi used the technology disclosed in under NDA. So Hitachi is bascially claiming that a company with $45 million in sales and $8 Billion in market cap is a monopoly akin to the evil old Standard Oil or IBM. HAHAHAHAHA!
The rest of the DRAM industry is going to be leaning heavily on HIT--which wants to sell its DRAM business to NEC--to settle before trial, and not test whether Rambus' patents extend to DDR and SDRAM. Rambus has said that if it goes to trial, they will not license ANYTHING to Hitachi. Heads Rambus wins, tails Hitachi loses.
They will settle by August.
Good post!
Moreover, Rambus costs $1,000 for 128MB. Check out:
http://www.mushkin.com
..one of the few online dealers where you can even find it. Intel it betting a LOT on RAMBUS, and pissing off everyone with their flaky i820 and i840 chipsets. Check out how many big OEMs now offer Athlon system. Intel has really left the door open for AMD. If AMD can get to market with a chipset that supports DDR-SDRAM, 4X-AGP, and SMP, they will put a serious hurt on Intel.
The one thing that will keep Rambus Memory, Inc. afloat is the fact that Intel supports them, and it will be the memory in Play Station-2s. But if the price does not fall down to somewhere within the range of DDR-SDRAM (which already exists for video cards) it is going to fail in the desktop market and take Intel's i820, i840, Pentium-III, and Williamette with it.
I'm really looking forward to buying an Athlon box as soon as SMP and DDR-SDRAM support are a reality. The VIA KX133 chipset is already a very nice stable platform for uniprocessor/SDRAM setups.
Good post. I'm not sure what I want Linux to be when it grows up, but I hope it doesn't become "Just as good as Windows or Macintosh."
I think the keys are OpenSource and different distributions. First, build a dominant position in the enterprise server market on the basis of reliability, security, reliability, scalability, reliability, and speed. Robust SMP support, journaling file systems, Firewire support, Ultra3 SCSI RAID device support--focus on these first.
Linux's opensourceness enables a wide range of distributions with different strengths--we're getting pretty close with Caldera's OpenLinux and Corel. RedHat seems to have cleaned up the buggy graphical install since 6.1--I just installed 6.2Beta and it was not challenging at all; it just worked. The GUI is still not what it needs to be but has come so far in the past year that I'm optimistic...
Finally, follow the Crusoe into the web appliance market. I think Linux could have a real edge here, where the UI can be designed from scratch, not depending on current paradigms.
So, all you need is an OC-3. Is this part of the typical DVD pirate's took kit now?
How did you (or your friend) save the file on the other end? What kind of file system allowed you to store the entire movie--say, 4-5GB. I'm limited to 2GB files right now under win or Linux.
Why would anyone use this method to pirate a DVD movie when they could just copy the disk for a lot less money, and much less chance of getting caught?
good catch...my Dad was in OCS (V-12 program) with Valenti in '42-43, and my Dad is 79. Valenti's is no boomer, but a "Greatest Generation" guy.
He's a lobbyist--he doesn't set policy for Hollywood studios on things like DeCSS. But if you can change his mind, he can influence the industry's mindset. He did this in the 1970s over film ratings, convincing them to do something in their own interest rather than risk government ratings.
This is about the 5th time he's done this:
--Write column bashing Linux
--Get flamed by Linuxphiles for his lack of clues
--Write another column detailing the worst flames
--Write third colume rebutting chosen points
--Collect check from Microsoft
This allows him to be the center of a controversy for very little work. How else is he going to stay relevant? He is clueness on purpose.
Do him some real damage...Ignore him.
what the heck does "cohesive" mean in this context? It does what they expect it to do? (crash...just kidding).
I'd say that NT is good for the enterprise environment, but not for the average desktop user. It may be more reliable than Win9x (YMMV), but it has very limited support for multimedia, a much more restricted hardware base--no PnP, no PCI steering, no USB, no AGP--and is VERY unforgiving of changes in the hardware configuration. Heck, RH6.1 is waaay more forgiving, and Kudzu actually works at detecting new hardware (if only it played nicer with isapnp).
For the average desktop user, Win98 presents an equally reliable cohesive environment (whatever cohesive means).
Here are the simple instructions for upgrading WinNT hardware:
Replace HDD? Reinstall WinNT...
Replace Motherboard? Reinstall...
Replace Video Card? Reinstall..
Installed new software that modified any networking or display settings? Reapply service pack X.
Win2k is a quantum leap--I've heard almost nothing bad about it (other than it is late) even from most Linux zealots.
"You still haven't run Q3A on it! "
Uh, yes they did--Dave Taylor kicked Linus' butt, and it was Q3A. Please make at least a minor effort to know what you are talking about--visit:
http://www.transmeta.com.
You should give VMWare another look--I don't know how long ago you tried it, but the released version for Linux (1.1.2, built 364) is quite usable. Version 2.0Beta is extremely nice--more stable, quicker, better SVGA drivers, and improved disk performance. It runs without a hitch on my system (RH6.1)--never hangs, never segfaults. Word and Excel 2000 run at near-native speeds. VMWare still has some issues when it comes to booting off raw SCSI disks (careful typing here!), but is a very usable product.
I agree that OS emulation is not the answer--probably something more along the lines of Transmeta may be. But VMWare works pretty well--especially with the 2.2.12 or later Linux kernels.