DDR-SDRAM Has Finally Arrived

Introduction

The first time we heard about the future successor of the popular SDRAM memory type 'DDR'-SDRAM is several years ago now. Back then it simply sounded like the logical consequence to prolong the life of synchronous memory and the anticipation was as high as the expectation to soon welcome this speed-improved new memory type in the market. It took surprisingly long until now finally the first DDR SDRAM-equipped systems started to become available. The main reason for the long delay was the once so strong semi-monopolist Intel, which had announced about two years ago, that the future performance memory type would not be DDR-SDRAM memory, but Rambus RDRAM. At this time it almost looked as if DDR-SDRAM would never make it in the PC as main memory, because products that weren't supported by Intel's processors happened to die within a short period of time.

Intel And Rambus Weren't Able To Stop DDR-SDRAM

Things worked out differently though. The marriage with Rambus started an unfortunately long line of failures for the Santa Clara-based chipmaker. At the same time Intel's arch rival AMD started to come out with the K7-architecture, today known as Athlon and Duron , which happened to be rightfully received very positively. AMD gained market share while Intel lost it. The Taiwanese chipset maker VIA benefited from Intel's Rambus-policy as well and finally all the support was there that was needed for the successful launch of the DDR-SDRAM technology. Intel had to learn that products could be successful even without the blessing from Santa Clara. Today, Intel has finally announced the break-up with Rambus and we know that there will be Intel-chipsets with DDR-SDRAM support soon too.