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Rambus delay spurs ad-hoc effort in US Taiwan -- Support grows for PC133 DRAM Alternative
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Tuesday, March 9, 1999
Taipei, Taiwan - A groundswell of support for the PC133 DRAM specification is building in Taiwan and the United States. With Intel Corp. otherwise occupied with the difficult transition to the Rambus memory architecture, a growing number of memory and chip-set companies are working to establish PC133 as an alternative in the marketplace.
An ad hoc group of companies backing the PC133 device and module specification is scheduled to meet in San Jose, Calif., tomorrow to discuss options. David Pulling, vice president of marketing at Reliance Computer Corp. (San Jose), said, "It started out as monthly gatherings at our company, but now the attendance has grown to the point that we are going to move the venue to an outside location." About 120 representatives are expected to attend the meeting.
Pulling said easing the technology into the personal-computer space is where much of the group's attention is shifting.
Hitachi Ltd. recently announced a full line of devices and modules that support the PC133 specification, joining Samsung Electronics and an expanding list of DRAM and module vendors.
In Taiwan, Via Technologies Inc.-which has 10.5 percent of the worldwide core-logic market, compared with 71 percent for Intel Corp.-is leading the fight for 133-MHz SDRAM as a workable memory alternative. Several weeks ago, Via announced a cooperative effort to develop a PC133 memory specification. Aimed at less-expensive desktops than the Rambus-enabled models, the Via effort enjoys the support of a growing number of suppliers, including Micron Technology, NEC and Samsung.
Some memory manufacturers, however, question whether the cost of shifting to Rambus can be justified, particularly if system OEMs avoid using the 600-MHz Rambus "speed bin." Too many Rambus parts are not able to hit the full 800-MHz specification, opponents point out, and DRAM makers see no ready market for the slower Rambus parts, which would deliver little or no performance gain over the 133-MHz SDRAMs.
Industry standard
Via president Wen-chi Chen said his company is putting in place "the necessary engineering and marketing resources to ensure a smooth transition from the current 100-MHz standard. Most, if not all, memory suppliers already have SDRAM devices capable of running at 133 MHz. So the only major thing holding up the move to the higher speed is the existence of an industrywide standard."
Intel filled that role in the PC66 and PC100 generation but has steadfastly refused to shift attention from Rambus, which could potentially double memory bandwidth. Asked repeatedly about PC133 at the Intel Developer Forum, Intel fellow Peter MacWilliams said the spec was "not on the Intel road map. "
Without Intel's leadership, the PC133 organizational job falls to Jedec, with support from the ad hoc group. Jedec, the international memory device/module standards group, has already developed a PC133-registered DIMM spec for servers and workstations.
The group's job now centers on a PC133 spec for PCs. "The alternative to a registered solution is an unbuffered one," said Dean Hays, director of marketing for Via. "The registers reduce the number of loads the memory module presents to the system bus, so that large numbers of DIMMs can be supported for workstations. In PCs, you can get away with two or three DIMMs to give you all the memory you need in a system, so you can use unbuffered DIMMs. "
By: DocMemory
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