SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Intel Corp.'s long-suffering effort to establish a market for the Rambus memory architecture took another unexpected turn on Wednesday (May 10), when Intel announced that it would replace motherboards that have a defective memory translator hub (MTH).
Fewer than one million systems have shipped with motherboards using the MTH and the 820 chip set. The 820 was originally designed to support Rambus DRAMs (RDRAMs); the MTH components allow a system to support standard synchronous DRAMs as well. The high cost and limited availability of RDRAMs led Intel to support this "bridge" approach that allows customers to load systems with SDRAMs until the availability of RDRAMs improved.
This approach requires an ASIC on the motherboard that sits between the 820 chip set and the SDRAMs and translates Rambus signaling into commands that the SDRAMs can understand.
The MTH began shipping in November 1999, and was used in "less than a majority" of the 820-equipped systems shipped to date, an Intel spokesman said.
The MTH, however, has caused system noise issues that, according to a statement from Intel, "can cause some systems to intermittently reset, reboot, and/or hang. In addition, the noise issues, under extreme conditions, potentially can cause data corruption."
Some users may not know if their system includes an MTH, and those customers can download an "MTH I.D. Utility" from the Intel Web site, the Intel spokesman said. Also, Intel is working with computer makers to identify which systems shipped with an MTH on board.
The spokesman declined to estimate how many systems might be affected, but said the number of boards that have shipped with the MTH since November is somewhat less than one million.
