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Intel may back PC133 after all
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Wednesday, July 28, 1999
Suddenly, it's a whole new high-speed memory market-and more confusing than ever.
Intel Corp. last week reversed its stringent opposition to the emerging PC133 SDRAM interface, and said it is now considering supporting the memory as an alternative to Direct Rambus DRAM. And almost all bets are on Intel adding PC133 support to its chipsets to give its customers something to work with in the event that Direct RDRAM is slow to take off in the market.
"It was very embarrassing for them to admit even that they're now considering PC133 after opposing the chip for so long," said Sherry Garber, an analyst with Semico Research Corp., Phoenix. "I'm sure this is a gradual Intel program to phase in PC133 support."
But Peter MacWilliams, Intel fellow and director of platform architecture, last week stressed that the Santa Clara, Calif., company is in no way backing off from its strong commitment to Direct RDRAM, still slated for a September launch along with Intel's new Camino 820 core-logic and memory-controller chipset. "We're convinced Direct Rambus will be the next-generation memory for PC desktops, workstations, and servers," MacWilliams said.
Intel will take the next month to mull over the PC133 interface, and will announce its final decision at the Intel Developer Forum to be held Aug. 31 to Sept. 2 in Palm Springs, Calif. "We'll be providing the definitive answer on PC133-yea/nay-and if yea, where it fits in and when," said Pat Gelsinger, vice president and general manager of Intel's desktop-products group.
While Intel is keeping mum on any definitive plans, the apparent policy reversal has forced the company to acknowledge that a dilemma looms for the memory market in the months ahead. "It appears there will be a longer period of Direct Rambus coexistence with SDRAMs," MacWilliams said. " Initially, [PC] OEMs will come to different conclusions on which memory [type] they'll want for different applications."
Indeed, Intel is responding to OEM customer requests for PC133 support "on an interim basis," MacWilliams said. "We were getting concerns from OEMs about whether the production ramp of Direct Rambus would be as aggressive as the market required." MacWilliams also conceded that initial Direct RDRAM prices will be "higher than we would like," while spot prices for SDRAM, at a little more than $4.30 for an 8-Mbit x 8 PC100 chip, have fallen far lower than anticipated.
That's precisely the quandary OEMs will face when both PC133 and Direct RDRAM enter volume production in the fourth quarter and early next year. PC makers are playing their cards close to the vest on their high-speed memory choice-with no models announced yet using either DRAM type.
IBM and Gateway, however, have said separately that they will have servers on the market later this year with PC133 memory. And several chip makers have indicated that servers and sub-$1,000 PCs will widely adopt PC133 because prices will be virtually the same as for PC100 chips, and the same DIMM form factor can be used.
Sources said Dell and Compaq will likely be the first to unveil high-end workstation models using Direct Rambus. Dell procures its PC motherboards from Intel, and has long been considered a likely launch partner for Direct RDRAM systems. Seth Dickson, an analyst with Warburg Dillon Read LLC, San Francisco, told EBN he expects that the boards Intel supplies to Dell will use two-thirds of all the Direct RDRAM chips manufactured in the fourth quarter of this year and the first quarter of 2000.
A Dell spokesman confirmed that the company will unveil a high-end workstation later this year using Direct Rambus memory, but provided no further details, nor would he comment on whether Dell would launch PCs using PC133.
If Intel does wind up supporting PC133, as many expect, suppliers that were positioning themselves behind either SDRAM or Rambus will face a less divisive future in the near term. However, both PC133 and its successor, DDR PC266, will be battling head-on with Direct RDRAM for the mainstream desktop market, forcing virtually every top-tier DRAM vendor to juggle an unprecedented variety of interfaces, package types, and back-end test processes.
Phil Martin, technology market development director for Boise, Idaho, DRAM maker Micron Technology Inc., summed up the evolving memory market: "For the first time, we're going to have highly differentiated commodity memory types. It isn't clear how OEMs will sort out their requirements, and which type of memory they'll use in which applications. No longer will one type of memory fit all."
That puts even more pressure on OEMs and their memory vendors to solve what has been one of the more obnoxious supply problems: getting OEMs to hand over far more accurate demand forecasts according to memory type and quantity.
"It takes three months to run a wafer down the line, package it, and test it," Martin said. "Because we're now dealing with radically different memory types, we need much greater accuracy in deciding on the mix of wafers we start down the line."
Even within the PC133 camp, the market faces intense competition, whether or not Intel joins the party.
Independent Taiwanese core-logic chipset vendors Acer Laboratories, Silicon Integrated Systems, and Via Technologies, as well as San Jose-based Reliance Computer, will have PC133 versions on the market this fall. Via broke the ice last week when it introduced the Apollo Pro+ 133 chipset, which links PC133 with a 133-MHz frontside microprocessor bus.
Intel's MacWilliams said last week that if Intel goes ahead with PC133 support, it will adapt an existing chipset to handle the new memory, but he added that deliveries wouldn't start until early 2000. That timetable would give Intel's chipset rivals up to a six-month head start in the race for motherboard orders.
Intel didn't identify any specific chipset being considered for PC133 support, but sources said both the Camino 820 and the upcoming 810e are likely candidates.
Although Intel last week finally confirmed its about-face on PC133, memory-module makers had previously said they were shipping samples to the chip maker for testing. Additionally, Intel president Craig Barrett told EBN last May that the company would have a contingency plan for possible PC133 support, depending on the initial price and availability of its preferred Direct RDRAM standard. -Additional reporting by Mark Hachman.
By: CST Staff
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