Intel exec: DDR will replace Rambus on desktop

by Nico Ernst

November 19, 2001 —

Intel Corp. will place its focus in the future on DDR (Double Data Rate) memory, and sees Rambus as only a niche product, said Intel executive Anand Chandrasekher in an interview.

Chandrasekher is vice president of the Intel Architecture Group and marketing director of the department. At present he supports Intel PC-133 and Rambus memory; when the new Pentium 4 DDR chip set, code named Brookdale, appears, he'll add DDR-SDRAM (Synchronous Dynamic RAM) to the list.

To the question of whether there will again be a single memory technology for desktop PCs, Chandrasekher said last Wednesday in Munich, "I think by (the end of) 2002 you're going to probably see DDR be the bulk of the performance desktop memory. Whether it makes it in the value space, which is the Celeron, or whether Celeron stays with SDRAM, I think that will be a function of
pricing and how much of a price (difference) there is between DDR and SDRAM in that timeframe."

Until now Intel had pushed the controversial Rambus memory chips for high-end PCs, and renewed that commitment at each Intel Developer Forum (IDF). Anand Chandrasekher is now turning his back on that.

"Rambus I think is going to get niched into the very performance-intensive applications, largely workstations. And over time, unless the economies of scale change at Rambus, I think DDR will be the winner even in that arena," the Intel manager said.

He added that Intel is working on a new DDR technology. "We talked about that at IDF (the Intel Developer Forum)."

So Intel could possibly completely pull out of the Rambus chip set business, sooner or later, and leave it to providers like Silicon Integrated Systems Corp. (SIS), which just in recent weeks signed a licensing agreement with Rambus. On internal Intel roadmaps for 2002 there's now only the "Tehama-E" listed as a new Rambus chip set for the desktop.

tecChannel (Germany)