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You'll soon have yet another common memory choice for your next computer.

Double data rate memory is ready for the big time, according to memory makers at an industry DDR Summit in Taipei this week. Manufacturers suggest they are set to rapidly increase production of the high-speed DDR memory in coming months.

DDR SDRAM is touted by many memory suppliers and industry watchers as a more cost-efficient alternative to RDRAM, a competing high-speed memory technology developed by Rambus and backed mainly by processor giant Intel. PC World.com's first look at a DDR-based system from MicronPC.com brought raves.

Despite the hype, DDR will actually gain momentum slowly, according to some. In 2001, DDR SDRAM is only expected to make up about 15 percent of total DRAM volume, says Farhad Tabrizi, vice president of worldwide memory product marketing at Hyundai Electronics.

However, it will increase quickly to around 40 percent by 2002 and could reach as high as 85 percent by 2004, he says.

The big question at the conference is when the memory suppliers would be able to reach their stated goal of reaching pricing parity between DDR SDRAM and the SDRAM chips found in most of today's computers.

Micron Pushes Parity

One of the most aggressive backers of DDR SDRAM is Micron Technology, and the company is dedicated to closing the pricing gap sooner rather than later, says Jeff Mailloux, director of DRAM marketing.

New generations of DRAM historically have not been widely accepted by the market until they were sold at the same price as the previous generation, Mailloux notes. That's why the company wants to drive adoption of DDR SDRAM by reaching pricing parity as quickly as possible.

"While volume does drive cost, pricing drives volume," he says. However, one major hurdle to overcome before the industry can reach the goal of pricing parity is that SDRAM pricing today is at a "very painful" level, providing little incentive for the suppliers to offer DDR SDRAM at "a loss," says Jon Kang, senior vice president of Samsung Electronics' memory technology and product division.

Nevertheless, by as early as midyear, you should be able to find 128MB of DDR SDRAM in even low-end $599 desktop PCs, regardless of whether the price of such memory modules is still as high as $100, notes Hyundai's Tabrizi.

DDR Expected to Spread

The consensus among officials speaking here is that DDR SDRAM will be used in a variety of devices. Those devices will range from low-end desktop and notebook PCs to servers and workstations, as well as other digital gadgets and networking applications.

Even Samsung, one of the early backers and the largest supplier of the competing RDRAM chips, expects to see system vendors adopt DDR SDRAM in a wide range of devices, and Kang says the company expects to rapidly ramp up production.

Meanwhile, having produced RDRAM chips since 1999, Samsung is finally reaping the fruits of its efforts as demand has taken off with Intel's launch of the high-end Pentium 4 processor, he says.

"As the only memory solution for the Pentium 4, Rambus will ramp very quickly this year," Kang predicts. Samsung expects RDRAM to make up as much as 30 percent of its total DRAM production this year, while DDR SDRAM will make up about 10 percent, Kang says.

But once Intel and other suppliers launch Pentium 4 chip sets that support SDRAM and DDR SDRAM for use in mainstream desktop PCs, the higher cost of RDRAM is likely to make it attractive only for end-users looking for the highest performance available, he adds.

Intel in the second half of this year is scheduled to release a Pentium 4 chip set code named Brookdale that initially will support SDRAM, with a DDR SDRAM version to follow.

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