DDR SDRAM History

DDR SDRAM

Just last year, DDR and Direct Rambus DRAM (Direct RDRAM) were fighting it out to determine which would be the memory architecture of the next generation. Roll forward ten months and we see Intel's clout has placed Direct RDRAM in the lead. DDR SDRAM now seems to be the neglected stepchild among memory manufacturers because Intel (the evil stepmother?) chose to support Rambus' technology.

Although Intel has pressured most memory manufacturers into supporting Direct RDRAM, SDRAM is still alive. Rambus related hiccups have already delayed the launch of Intel's 820 (Camino) chipset several times this year. The 820 is the first chipset to support Direct RDRAM, and memory manufacturers had been ramping up DRDRAM production in anticipation of the 820 launch, but Intel has recently announced that 820 would be delayed once again. (It seems having three filled RIMM slots on the motherboard may cause data errors with current motherboard designs.) Now memory manufacturers are halting DRDRAM production, and have resumed production of SDRAM. Chipset maker VIA has been pushing a competing PC133 SDRAM standard, but SDRAM unlikely to take Rambus' top spot, even with the head start.

DDR Gone?

We'll probably never see DDR SDRAM in system memory, unless Intel releases a chipset with DDR support and that'll probably happen right after they finish that Athlon chipset. Then again, if VIA continues on its SDRAM path, we might see a VIA chipset with DDR support.

It's all about DDR.

DDR DRAM has been available for over a year now. Back when Intel first announced it was supporting Rambus for the next generation architecture, memory manufacturers decided to create an alternate DDR SDRAM standard because they didn't want to pay the Rambus licensing fees for every DRDRAM chip produced. Well, Rambus won out, but why waste all the effort that was put into DDR RAM? Hey! We can still slap some DDR RAM on all those bandwidth hungry video cards out there -we don't need no stinking Intel chipset to do that!