RAMBUS WILL NEVER DIE *ehem*

[spud]

<A HREF="http://news.com.com/2100-1001-976211.html?tag=fd_top" target="_new">Link</A>.

-Jeremy

<font color=blue>Just some advice from your friendly neighborhood blue man </font color=blue>

 

[Raystonn]

What does that link have to do with Rambus or RDRAM?

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[spud]

The core will be running on RDRAM as found <A HREF="http://www.aceshardware.com/" target="_new">here</A>. Oh and hey Ray hows life been treating you haven't seen you around lately.

-Jeremy

<font color=blue>Just some advice from your friendly neighborhood blue man </font color=blue>

 

[slvr_phoenix]

The EV7 is essentially the combination of the current EV6 (21264) core with a <b>1.75 MB on-chip L2 cache</b>, a <b>12.8 GB/s Rambus DRAM memory interface</b>, and an integrated crossbar for glueless SMP. These improvements could be compared in some ways with those made to AMD's Opteron, though the EV7's memory interface provides over twice the bandwidth of the Opteron's 128-bit DDR SDRAM interface, and <b>is designed for systems with as many as 128-processors and 4 TB of memory</b>.

Damn! Now if they could just make the Alpha x86 compatible. Heh heh.

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[Kelledin]

So you're saying Rambus will live forever by integrating with a platform that's scheduled to die?

Hmmmm...ok then.

(Don't get me wrong, I like the Alpha architecture, and I respect Rambus technology. But your reasoning seems quite broken...)

<i>I can love my fellow man...but I'm damned if I'll love yours.</i>

 

[Galvin]

In quad channel rdram can blow away DC DDR big time.
1200mhz RDRAM is coming out soon. quad channel that and you could have a 1200mhz FSB. That would be insane, but I figure thats what they are doing, but probably doing it with 32bit RDRAM in quad channel instead of 4 sticks of 16bit in quad channel.

 

[Raystonn]

Nice chip, but noone is planning on sticking with the Alpha's instruction set any longer. So it wouldn't be a very wise investment. I'd rather have a Madison Itanium with its 6MB of cache. That should be out early next year.

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[spud]

This is a step in the right direction though. Its showing that Top Tier OEM's still see value in RDRAM. If they can convince Intel to stick RD with the Itainium it could change the landscape of the server market. RDRAM is unbeatable in QRDRAM format. How long till SUN and even AMD see the merit in a superior memory technology.

The industry is moveing along nicely finally they are stepping away from IDE for serial ATA how much longer can we cling to a SDRAM no matter how many channels you stick to this stuff its still the same old technology. Its dead its a pity that people are more concerned with company policies then the power of the technology.

-Jeremy

<font color=blue>Just some advice from your friendly neighborhood blue man </font color=blue>

 

[Schmide]

Initially taping-out in April of last year, the EV7 is expected to debut at roughly 1.2 GHz in January. It is by no means a small chip, measuring 400 mm2 and dissipating a maximum of 155W on an 0.18-micron process. It also features a rather large 1443-pin FC-LGA package.

Whoa! That thing it huuuge! 400mm^2. Correct me if I'm wrong that core is about 2cm x 2cm. In terms of wafer space yield, again correct me if I'm wrong, that's like ~145 processors for 300mm, ~64 for 200mm. Compare that to the new Northwood at 131mm^2, down from 145mm^2, yielding ~430 per 300mm. (145mm^2 yields ~400). AMD's 200mm process should yield ~300 processors from a 200mm wafer. It's still better than Itanium2 at 421mm^2 yielding ~135 while Madison edges under 400mm^2 at 380mm^2 yielding ~150. None of these numbers account for bad chips.

Dichromatic for your viewing plesure...

 

[Raystonn]

If a new RDRAM chipset for desktop processors does not appear soon, then JEDEC better get off its rear ends and validate the specs for DDR400 and beyond. I do not want to have to use poorly-defined memory technology in my next system. Unfortunately, the uneducated masses seem to have had an impact on certain marketing departments with their dollars. RDRAM designs are getting scarce in chipset makers. We may end up with the AOL of memory types simply because of ignorance.

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[eden]

This is the result of Rambus dragging ass, as I have so many times said, along with so many people agreeing or having said that too. I remember your big post about 78GB/sec and the future of RDRAM...
Yeah good luck with that when the company too so long to have PC1066 out there at such a price. It'll be a while if that's how Rambus goes, and it's because of such that we are not treated by their better technology. If they had gone faster and tried to put some competitive pricing, Intel probably would've stuck to them, but now we have to concede, chances are slim as hell.


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[Raystonn]

This is the result of Rambus dragging ass

Not really. We already have the memory technology from Rambus that is required to make a chipset for the 800MHz System Bus of the Prescott. Someone just needs to design a motherboard that takes two PC800 32-bit RDRAM modules at a time. This would be a quad-channel (16-bit channels) chipset. You can do it today. The problem is that marketing departments sense more demand for DDR than for RDRAM, so they aren't bothering.

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[slvr_phoenix]

Besides, there's always <A HREF="http://www.rambus.com/technology/yellowstone_overview.shtml" target="_new"><font color=yellow><b>Yellowstone</b></font color=yellow></A>. Rambus isn't dragging their arse. They have the memory of the future, available today. It's the PC industry that's dragging their arse and avoiding Rambus like the plague.

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[eden]

I've also outlined price. Of course if Rambus likes to play hard with their pricing, no one will buy.
I sure as hell would never pay 225$ CDN for a 256MB Stick of PC1066 when for 100$ less I get DDR333 with as much performance, if not a bit less.
It's price gouging, and until Rambus changes that selfish attitude, they will continue losing chances. Why haven't they reacted already to competition, is beyond me, but I will not feel sympathy if they go down, because I know deep down they just aren't even listening to the consumers and competing right, so being hard-headed will drop you hard as well.

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[slvr_phoenix]

Eden, do you <i>reallt</i> think that it is <i>Rambus</i> that is setting the price that high? Rambus has a small royalty charge for producing RDRAM that SDRAM doesn't, but do you honestly believe that their royalties are <i>that</i> hight?

Or do you believe (as I do) that it is:

1) A combination of the memory producers (Samsung, Kingston, etc.) and the memory resellers (BestBuy, Smoking Bob's PC Hut, etc.) that jacked the prices up for RDRAM because of higher cost of production combined with a lack of demand.

2) The fact that there are so many cheap-arsed crappy SDRAM memory manufacturers out there that SDRAM's prices are driven down by competition with these PoS producers and shady RAM OCers. Where as RDRAM is primarily only produced by major manufacturers and thus there is very little crap or OCed RDRAM out there compared to SDRAM.

Food for thought. Here are some prices taken from Pricewatch for comparison:

Generic RAMs
256MB PC800 RIMM = $77
256MB PC1066 RIMM = $98
256MB PC2700 DIMM = $54
256MB PC3200 DIMM = $63

Quality RAMs
256MB PC800 40ns Samsung RIMM = $77
256MB PC1066 32ns Samsung RIMM = $98
256MB PC2700 CL2 Corsair XMS DIMM = $90
256MB PC3200 CL2 Corsair XMS DIMM = $95

When you buy RDRAM, 99% of the time, you're buying top-notch RIMMs to begin with. There is no real room for improvement because you have 'the best'. The RDRAM market is basically like walking into a Ferari dealership. You're not there to browse through cheap crap. You're there because you want performance. The vast majority of RDRAM sellers simply don't cater to anything less.

So if you want to whine about RDRAM prices, go right ahead. But at least first compare those prices to SDRAM of <i>equal</i> performance and make sure you're <i>really</i> comparing apples to apples.

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[Raystonn]

You have pretty much covered everything I was planning to say. You hit the nail on the head.

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[spud]

Thank you finally someone that realizes that it aint cause of Rambus.

-Jeremy

<font color=blue>Just some advice from your friendly neighborhood blue man </font color=blue>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

It's so nice to see you and Ray back again.
I was wondering too what happened to the ram game.

Over here in Oz PC1066 is still rare as buggery, And PC3200 isnt exactly pleatiful either... or for that matter chipsets that properly support it.

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[eden]

I will concede for now that it seems it's not Rambus' fault.
But please, can YOU tell me what will happen next?
Will RDRAM ever become affordable?
Is the extra $$$ worth it to warrant a 5% boost in performance?
In Canada the price is ever more jacked, and quality 256MB DDR333 sticks are about 150$, still much below the RDRAM PC1066 256MB. In fact the 225$ I spoke of was not even from a reputable company, and was put under Generic. So in the end, it's almost paying 100$ more that stick, and when you consider 512MB is now the norm, well you're pretty much making yourself in debt than helping any company out there.
This isn't good, and I doubt there will be many to throw so much money for such little performance gain. I know you for one wouldn't, considering you're so low on budget!
I would never be able to and if I had money, I'd never waste it on that.
Care to tell me some possibility or hope for RDRAM, or will it remain such a novelty that I will continue to care less by the passing generation?!

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[juin]

Samsung have made 5 billion on selling RDRAM and Rambus do 20 million a year on royality.On quick caculation that give few penny at rambus each stick.For the die overhead of RDRAM vs DDR PC 2100 the margin is 15% on 128 mbit module and around 2% for 1gbit module.The yield is also a bit lower for samsung but for all others manufacturer the only thing they know is SDRAM so rdram come hard to produce.

I dont agree that alpha is dead there a lot of alpha systemes sold also EV7 will be release at a bit higher frenquency if HP want alpha to compete with IA-64 ligne.

Now what to do??

 

[dhlucke]

Generic RAMs
256MB PC800 RIMM = $77
256MB PC1066 RIMM = $98
256MB PC2700 DIMM = $54
256MB PC3200 DIMM = $63

Quality RAMs
256MB PC800 40ns Samsung RIMM = $77
256MB PC1066 32ns Samsung RIMM = $98
256MB PC2700 CL2 Corsair XMS DIMM = $90
256MB PC3200 CL2 Corsair XMS DIMM = $95

That's very interesting. Good point!

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