Memory price rise has nearly leveled out the cost of RDRAM and DDR SDRAM models. Formerly PC800 RDRAM and PC2100 DDR SDRAM prices differed several times, now it’s just a matter of 20-30% (according to pricewatch). This way, Rambus is gaining ever more popularity among both users and developers, so it’s high time to relate what Rambus officials said about RDRAM nearest outlooks at Platform Conference.
Today Rambus pays attention to two new standards to appear this year. Firstly, these are PC1066 RIMMs to arrive in mass. They will work at 533MHz (instead of 400MHz) which would ensure greater bandwidth. As a proof of PC1066 RIMM availability, Rambus demonstrated at the Conference a working system with PC1200 RDRAM modules. The system was based on i850 chipset and Pentium 4 CPU, but its FSB was overclocked to 150MHz. Furthermore, PC1066 will feature 4i (4 independent bank) architecture which is supposed to make the RIMMs cheaper.
Secondly, this year we are looking forward to 32bit RIMMs to come out (nowadays there are only 16bit RDRAM modules selling). In short, a 32bit RIMM is nothing more than two Rambus channels on a single module. As Rambus officials say, such modules will allow for mainboards with a less complicated design and the modules themselves will be not so expensive.
As for the upcoming chipsets providing RDRAM support, after Intel refused to promote Rambus technologies in favor of DDR SDRAM, RDRAM future turned vague. However, this is no dead-end. In April Intel will launch another (most probably the last) RDRAM chipset, i850E. It will support Pentium 4 CPUs with 533MHz Quad Pumped Bus and PC1066/PC800 RDRAM modules.
As Intel lost interest to Rambus, there are some other chipset manufacturers to take up its place. According to Rambus, these are VIA and SiS. The latter has already started to develop a chipset with RDRAM support (it is named SiS 658). This chipset is intended for Pentium 4 CPUs (from 400MHz to 533MHz Quad Pumped Bus) and will support PC1066 RDRAM.