Rambus Inc. on Wednesday said the demise of the four-bank Direct RDRAM is not a problem, because prices of the once-high premium RDRAM memory chip have now dropped to parity with the rival DDR devices.
Frank Fox, vice president and general manager of RDRAM Solutions Division, said the four-bank chip was originally designed to be a lower cost version to make Direct Rambus more competitive. "It is no longer needed now because RDRAM prices have dropped to the competitive levels where the four-bank version was originally targeted," he told EBN.
He cited PriceWatch listings this week that showed the 800-MHz 128-Megabit RDRAM selling at $3.40, compared with a 128-Mbit 266MHz DDR at $3.30.
"We feel very good that from now on RDRAM will be very price competitive with DDR. Pricing will no longer be an obstacle," he claimed.
He said 1.066-GHz RDRAM "short channel" chips -- those going into applications using up to four devices -- are already in production at Samsung Electronics. He expected a "long channel" 1.066-GHz version going into 8-chip RIMMs would be in production later this year.
Rambus also plans later this year to introduce double channel RIMMs with 16 RDRAM chips providing 4.2-Gigabyte/sec bandwidth. In the future a quad channel RIMM with 32 devices will be developed.
Also on the roadmap is a 1.2GHz RDRAM chip. Asked if the higher frequencies were the result of RDRAM die shrinks due to 0.15-micron and 0.13-micron processing, Fox referred the question to memory chip makers. However, he said no redesign of the chip is needed, and all frequency ranges are compatable.
Fox said the 1.066GHz RDRAM will increase the chip's performance for the highly competitive networking market when it becomes available.
