Rambus Offers a Peek at Future Chips

On the tail of Intel's release of its first chip set allowing the Pentium 4 to use memory designed by companies other than Rambus, the memory maker is this week expected to unveil a range of new technologies intended to position its products as superior memory formats.

Rambus is unveiling new I/O technology and laying out its plans for Rambus Dynamic RAM at the Rambus Developer Forum in Santa Clara, California this week. A highlight is Thursday's scheduled announcement of the company's next-generation signaling technology, code-named Yellowstone.

Faster signaling technology means an increase in the speed of information traveling between any two chips on a board. Rambus now has two signaling technologies, Rambus Signaling Level and the higher performance Quad Rambus Signaling Level, which is roughly twice as fast as RSL. Yellowstone will be another step up for signaling technology, but all three will coexist, serving different market segments, according to Rambus representatives.

Upcoming Chips

Rambus will also give an update on the future of its high-bandwidth I/O communications technology called the RaSer (Rambus Serializer/Deserializer) cell. A cell is any design element of a chip set. RaSer technology can be used to connect chips to chips or boards to boards, and can increase the speed of data traveling over wide-area network routers, Fiber Channel, Gigabit Ethernet, or InfiniBand network interfaces, according to Rambus. RaSer cells are available in single, dual, and quad-channel configurations, with a quad cell capable of driving up to 12.5 gigabits per second in each direction, Rambus representatives say.

The company is also planning to give details on its road map for both RDRAM and Rambus Inline Memory Module. RIMMs are small boards of Rambus memory designed to take up less space in a world of ever-increasing PC components. In June, Rambus representatives said the company expects to have 64-bit RIMM modules, capable of transmitting 9.6 gbps by 2005.

One analyst says Rambus may also announce a new chip set that connects a processor to the memory--but not one from Intel, as might be expected.

"There's been a rumor going around of there being a new Rambus chip set from a company other than Intel," says Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research. McCarron declines to speculate on which company might manufacture the chip set.

Beyond PCs

McCarron also says Rambus may choose to focus on using RDRAM for devices other than PCs.

"They've had design wins in game consoles and some communications equipment," he says. "I don't think you'll see a big announcement of that, [rather] more of a discussion that RDRAM works in a lot of places." Sony's PlayStation 2 is perhaps the best-known game console to use RDRAM.

"Beyond that, I expect them to continue focusing on a performance message," McCarron says. "In spite of Intel, they're still going to try and lay claim to performance strengths." On Monday, Intel launched the 845 chip set, which allows memory other than RDRAM to be used with its Pentium 4 processor.