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Second-Gen DDR SDRAM On The Horizon 145

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hardware-i-wann-ahandle dept.
cplcap writes "This story in The Register picks up on Samsung's new DDR-II Chips, pushing DDR's speed up to 533 Mb/s and a 4.2GB/s memory bus. Prototype 512MB DIMMs are being produced, and IBM has developed a chipset to take advantage of the speed. There's a little more meat in Samsung's official press release."
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Second-Gen DDR SDRAM On The Horizon More

Second-Gen DDR SDRAM On The Horizon

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  • the big question is... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2002 @08:53AM (#3601608) Homepage

    Is it a whole new form factor so everyone had to redesign the motherboards and to force incompatability with older systems??

    This is important because industrial and corperate-mission-critical is older equipment. and an upgrade path for ram is still important.
    • Is the form factor that important if the memory bus speed is increasing? It's going to be incompatible anyway.
    • > -Microsoft and the BSA, the BEST advocates to get companies to switch to Linux! Thanks Microsoft!

      Stop telling this, they can change the way they act !
    • As this memory will require a new chipset, it will be incompatible with older motherboards anyway.

    • Re:the big question is... (Score:5, Informative)

      by ToLu the Happy Furby ( 63586 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2002 @09:33AM (#3601838)
      Is it a whole new form factor so everyone had to redesign the motherboards and to force incompatability with older systems??

      The answer is...yes and no. DDR-II does have a new form factor, with 232 pins, as compared to the 184 currently used in a DDR (I) DIMM. Similarly, a DDR (I) DIMM has a bit more pins than the 168 found in an SDRAM DIMM.

      However, this isn't such a big deal for the mobo makers; it's just a matter of putting on a different slot and different traces on the board. One of the things that has made the transition from SDRAM to DDR more "evolutionary" than a transition to (say) RDRAM would have been, is that the same chipset can control both SDRAM and DDR, because they use the same (or at least backwards-compatible) commands. It's not often mentioned on the hardware-enthusiast sites which are only interested in benchmarking the fastest stuff around, but just about every DDR chipset is also available with SDRAM. You need a different motherboard--because the slots are incompatible--but the cost to the mobo makers for offering both versions is pretty small.

      In a similar vein, the commands for DDR-II are a superset of the DDR-I command set, such that DDR-II chipsets should very easily be able to detect and use DDR-I as well, just like DDR-I chipsets currently use SDRAM as well. Furthermore there is talk (dunno if it will happen) of releasing DDR-I DIMMs in the 232-pin DDR-II form factor; that way, one could buy a motherboard and use either DDR-II or DDR-I in it, with no problems. Of course old sticks of DDR-I will not fit, and the new ones will not fit in current DDR motherboards.

      So, while such a scheme doesn't get rid of all the headaches of an incompatible upgrade path, it does address some, albeit more on the mobo producer end of things than on the IT inventory end of things. It is indeed a pain that, while SDRAM (and the SDRAM form factor) enjoyed around 4 years as the mainstream memory type, DDR-I will only be on top for 2 before DDR-II takes over. And DDR-II will be lucky to have 3 years before something pin-incompatible comes along to replace it.

      On the other hand, the SDRAM -> DDR transition probably would have happened a year earlier if Intel hadn't tried to transition to RDRAM instead. And, meanwhile, being stuck with SDRAM for 4 years meant DRAM bandwidth only doubled (and actual performance did less than that) over a period when CPU clock speeds increased by a factor of 5 or so. I think the DRAM industry wants to make speed increases more frequent than they were a few years ago, even if this means more inconvenience for corporate IT departments.

      This is important because industrial and corperate-mission-critical is older equipment. and an upgrade path for ram is still important.

      I'm not sure what you mean here. As far as the upgrade path for greater RAM capacity goes, standard SDRAM and DDR-I will still be made and sold for quite some time, even if they will eventually be more expensive than their newer and faster brethren. EDO RAM is still being made and sold today.

      If you mean an upgrade path for higher-performance, of course you can't just buy faster DRAM and expect it to speed up (or even work in) a system that was built to use a slower type. The system clock sets the DRAM speed, and unless the system has been validated to run at the new DRAM speed, doing so amounts to overclocking. An performance upgrade path for RAM is always going to require purchasing at least a new CPU module and accompanying memory bus, if not a new machine.
      • I suspect that there were really two factors at work in the short DDR-I lifetime.

        First, Intel muddied the waters with the big exclusive Rambus push. While there was DDR work going on prior to the Rambus push, there was some very real contention in carrying both programs through development. This doesn't even mention quite a bit of "wait and back the winner," at many levels of the industry.I suspect that the success of the Athlon competing with PIII had almost as much to do with DDR success as Rambus prices.

        Second, there were very real signal integrity issues that had been skirted for quite some time, and really came to the fore with DDR. That took some time, but more thought has been applied forward to DDR-II, so it shouldn't be as painful.
    • 3D Volume Holographics Optical Storage NanoTechnology wants to replace all memory devices with one storage device to handle all
      system memory requirements replacing DDR, SRAM,DRAM, MRAM, FRAM, CD, DVD, TAPE, HARD DRIVES, OVONIC, etc.

      www.colossalstorage.net

    • Damnit, I got my new box TWO MONTHS AGO and already the DIMM slots on its mother board have been outdated by DDR and now DDR-II is coming. They need to start making DIMM slots have more pins then are being used at the time the motherboard(s) are manufactured so we can upgrade with the latest chips as they come out. Bleh, sometimes I almost hate technology.
  • It seems not so surprising that IBM would flock to new and "exciting" technologies and improvements like this one. One can only wish that such forward thinking would shake-down through the rest of their organization.

    The geeks in the back rooms, and the engineers in the streets certainly see the benefits from this new technology. Perhaps someday the slimmer, sleeker, more lithe and less middle-management IBM will show itself and we'll see this sort of stuff rolling downhill more quickly.

    In the past, IBM has been near the forefront of going after new improvements. They sometimes just can't market their way out of a wet paper bag. Often sad, but true.

    • EXA Anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by OS24Ever ( 245667 )
      Have you not seen the new intel servers IBM is releasing like the x360 and x440?

      Need more PCI? Add a drawer of 12 and plug in a cable. Need more processors? Buy another four way and plug them together, you have an eight way.

      Hot swap a failed memory dimm lately? You can in a x440.

      There are a lot of cool tech coming from IBM in the xSeries servers. There are only so many marketing guys out there

      But it sure is easy to bash IBM, so people do. They are changing. You think the layoffs of the last year or two are getting rid of the good people and not the middle management?
      • Well, being an ex-IBMer, I have a little room to talk about them. I like -alot- of things they do. But, as stated, their biggest problem is they need better marketers. OS/2 would still be competitive today, I suspect, had IBM been able to market it properly.
      • Sun has had this for awhile. Well, it's not as easy as cabling up boxes- but the architecture is similar, if not better.

        Check out the Ultra Port Architecture [sun.com]. Basically a meta-bus that you can put CPUs, memory, and other buses (PCI, SBUS, etc) on.
        • True, and so has IBM in their AIX pSeries / RS6000 series.

          The xSeries however is Intel architecture. In that sense it's brand new cutting edge for that architecture.
      • PCI expansion is hardly revolutionary.

        Being a bus architecture, you can add additional PCI slot fairly easily. It just happens that it isn't very common in the commodity PC market because your standard PC case only has room for 7 expansion slots.

        In 1U rackmount servers PCI expansion cards for horizontal (to the motherboard) are common.

        LSI makes a highish-end 64-bit/66mhz PCI expander that I believe had 3 64-bit/66mhz slots on it.

  • On the horizon? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by delphin42 ( 556929 )
    It is nice to know what's coming, but Q3 2003 is a long ways away, and the modules being ready doesn't necessarily mean there will be a chipset ready that supports them. I'm still waiting for P4 motherboards to support 333Mhz DDR. Tom's has a review of the VIA P4X333 here [tomshardware.com], but we haven't seen any motherboards with this chipset yet. The VIA KT333 chipset currently has around 16 Athlon motherboards shipping with 333Mhz DDR [tomshardware.com] support.
    • I'm still waiting for P4 motherboards to support 333Mhz DDR.


      There are plenty of them, based on the SIS645DX chipset. I've got a ASUS P4S533 that supports it just fine, and can use DDR400 (though there is no ratified spec for it) as well.

      • > > I'm still waiting for P4 motherboards to support 333Mhz DDR.
        >
        >There are plenty of them, based on the SIS645DX chipset. I've got a ASUS P4S533 that supports it just fine, and can use DDR400 (though there is no ratified spec for it) as well.

        Wow, great timing... I'm looking at building a few boxen based on this mobo with a 1.6A, and for my own box, playing with FSB overclocks (133=533 sounds easy) versus running the RAM asynchronously.

        (If I need USB2.0 I can just use a card - I think Via's P4X333 chipset will be strong, but why wait another couple of months just to get USB 2.0 onboard. SiS645DX rocks.)

        So anyways - on to my question - when you say DDR400 on the P4S533, do you have a stick of DDR333 / CAS2.5 running as DDR400 / CAS3.0, and how does your bandwidth compare? (Or are you able to run it at CAS2.0 at 333, 2.5 at 400?)

        Any hints/tips appreciated. Thanx.

        • I'm using a stick of Corsair PC3200, which is DDR400 (or so claims Corsair). The P4S533 allows for async PCI:RAM, including a 4:6 when at 133MHz FSB or higher. That gives 200MHz when the FSB is 133MHz. I'm presently running a 1.6A at 141MHz FSB (2.256GMhz) and running the RAM at 211MHz. My Sandra memory scores beat 100MHz PC800 RDRAM by about 600MB/sec.
      • Also the i845G and P4X333 chipsets. Check the ACME Boardfinder [acme.com].

  • geez... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by echosa ( 582159 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2002 @09:09AM (#3601702)
    something tells me that the "computer age" is getting a bit unbalanced... we're nowhere NEAR reaching the hardware limits that we already have (home useage speaking at least) and we're already surpassing whats more than enough? sounds a bit unneccesary, at least for the moment...

    • Re:geez... (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You are wrong, echosa. I use every cycle of power on my system with a recording studio, and I will never NOT have a need for more power.
  • Since the slashdot article about IBM 210Ghz transistors [slashdot.org] I've not seen any further mention of these super-transistors or the possibility of building chipsets from the technology... And yes, I mean 210Ghz not 210Mhz.
    • 210GHz is the unity gain bandwidth of that transistor. That means that when switching at 210GHz, it only puts out as much as you put in (in layman's terms). In terms of chip production, that means you can only have a fanout of one. Therefore, it's impossible to construct basic circuit elements at that speed. Once you throw in a requirement for a fanout of say, 10, you've thrown 10 gate capacitances in parallel with that transistor, which is going to knock its bandwidth down quite a bit. To what, I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was by at least an order of magnitude.
      • The story on the IBM site [ibm.com] linked from the slashdot story claimed 100Ghz chips within two years (although we're talking comms chips) "IBM expects the new transistor will result in communications chips at speeds of 100 GigaHertz (GHz) within two years -- five times faster and four years sooner than recently-announced competitive approaches." So naturally I was curious what that might mean in terms of regular chips. Oliver

  • Clever Marketing Scheme (Score:3, Insightful)

    by goldspider ( 445116 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2002 @09:14AM (#3601729) Homepage
    How many people besides myself have noticed that there are hardly any backward-compatible hardware technology breakthroughs?

    I understand that there are physical limitations well beyond my comprehension that are factors in all of this, but it seems that any time one of these improvements comes out, be it RAM or CPUs or any number of other upgrades, a new chipset has to be developed to support it?

    I'll tell you why: because marketers understand that some people (many of which frequent this site) will pay plenty extra to have the latest technology, no matter what.

    I, for one, am sick of it. For once I'd like to be able to upgrade my CPU or RAM without having to buy a new motherboard and re-install my entire OS.

    Sorry for the rant, but I think the fact that every incremental hardware update requires a new chipset is noteworthy.

    • Well, of course. Processor gets faster, RAM gets faster, bits in between have to get faster too. You can't run an F1 car on a dirt track, you know.
    • Gotta love amd. For the most part AMD trys to avoid this. Now when it comes to ram changes they have no control. But i like how that Just because AMD comes out with a signaicantly fast CPU it doesnt mean you have to switch MOBOs. With Intel you pretty much have to buy a new MOBO with every new CPU.
      • My first reaction was "so what". I perceive a value to buying a new mobo when I buy a CPU. Pennies per part matter. I think I'd rather pay when I buy the next generation than future proof this generation for the added cost.
        My experience has been one of losing money in this way before on hardware. *Something* seems to obselete it no matter how manufacturers try to sell me futureproofed parts.

        Also one loses because they break. So it might take hardware improvements for three years but it's only got 1 year warranty anyway.
    • Simple. Next time you put together a computer, buy a chipset for DDR-II, but only put pc2100 memory in. Then, six months later, buy screaming fast DDR-II memory. Sure it'll cost you more in the long run, but you'll have upgraded your RAM successfully. Or you could do like everybody else and buy more RAM rather than faster to make your upgrade.

      Of course, if you had one of the early AMD t-bird chips, you could buy an XP and run it on the same motherboard, so CPUs generally are upgradeable within the same form-factor. Same is true for a Duron to XP upgrade.

      If you're having tp re-install your OS for a CPU or RAM upgrade, you've got bigger problems.
      • "If you're having tp re-install your OS for a CPU or RAM upgrade, you've got bigger problems."

        My point was that every time I've upgraded my CPU or RAM, I've had to buy a new motherboard as well. Hence the OS re-install.

        • >I've had to buy a new motherboard as well. Hence
          >the OS re-install.

          What OS are you running that can't handle a motherboard change?

          Even my last Win98 system survived three motherboard without a reinstall... along with four CPU any number of video/sound/network card changes.

          What x86 OS *can't* handle that?

          -l
          • Well, I've managed to break both win98 and win2000 by switching motherboards. (Crashing all the time, finding lots of new devices, messing up IRQs, etc.)

            I think most other OSes handle that stuff better...
        • Well, I've had to replace a bad mobo (with a different model mobo, but same CPU and RAM) on a machine that was dualbooting WinME and Linux. ME continued working fine (well, by ME standards, meaning it still only crashes once or twice a day) and Linux actually got more stable.

          Just make sure to keep drivers and so forth current.
        • > My point was that every time I've upgraded my CPU or RAM, I've had to buy a new motherboard as well. Hence the OS re-install.

          Depends on the upgrade.

          As a lark, when I moved from a Pentium I (430TX chipset) to the 440BX-based system (new mobo, Celeron CPU, new chipset, new video card, new sound card, new RAM), I tried transferring (after Ghosting :) a Win9x system to it. After several reboots and requests for the install CD, it actually ran.

          (Then, of course, I wiped it and reinstalled from scratch to be sure I had a decent config and drivers, but it's theoretically possible. I was amazed it worked at all.)

          That said, I chose the 440BX because it had headroom for growth. That lowly Celeron-366 (66 FSB oc'ed to 100 for 550 MHz) is now running a Celeron 800 at over 1 GHz (FSB at 124.) It could probably run at an FSB of 133, except that I've got mismatched sticks of PC133.

          Am I getting as much out of that PIII-1G on a 440BX chipset as I could? Of course not. My 5400 RPM drives are still running ATA-66. It's still SDRAM. It's still the same PCI frequency.

          But the upgrade was $50 for the CPU, gave me another two years out of the system, and (most importantly) required no time-consuming OS or driver changes, be it Win9x, 2000, or Linux.

          I think we might be at a similar point with the P4 Northwoods. Buy a cheap Northwood 1.6A now, and a mobo with a chipset (SiS 645DX or Via P4X333) with some FSB headroom. Throw some fast DDR-I into it.

          Two years down the road, I think you'll probably be able to plunk in another "$50 CPU and $20 stick of RAM" behind the OS's back, giving you decent performance for another year.

          There are no guarantees, of course, but by paying a $50 premium for quality parts today, you can often get better than 50/50 odds of saving $500+ two years from now. That's a good risk, IMNSHO.

      • Simple. Next time you put together a computer, buy a chipset for DDR-II, but only put pc2100 memory in. Then, six months later, buy screaming fast DDR-II memory. Sure it'll cost you more in the long run, but you'll have upgraded your RAM successfully. Or you could do like everybody else and buy more RAM rather than faster to make your upgrade.

        And then some new memory system will be announced that needs a new motherboard anyway.

        It's time the myth of the upgradable PC was put to rest.
        • I upgrade my PC regularly..

          The trick is to wait 2-3 years then upgrade the 'core' components all at once, it's a ton cheaper than buying a new system, and you end up with top of the line stuff.

          Of course, you can't stay at the very top of every component at all times, but considering a standard mobo/ram/cpu has been ~300 for quite a while, it's not to horrible.
    • Since it keeps all that backwards compatibility.
      On a serious note, keeping backwards compatibility both stifles development and raises cost. I don't complain that new computers are cheaper and faster than they ever have been.
      • "I don't complain that new computers are cheaper and faster than they ever have been.
        "

        That may be true, but I'd venture a guess that most people interested in this site don't upgrade in whole-computer increments.

        Perhaps, though, doing so is the best way to keep upgrade costs down.

        • I do know what you mean, of course, that upgrading one thing means upgrading a bunch. Personally I think they've done a pretty good job providing previous-generation support in motherboards (there were a ton of boards out there that supported both DDR and SDRAM, there were boards that supported SDRAM and EDO, EDO and FPM, etc). CPUs is another matter, of course, but you can use same board for anything from a duron 600MHz to a 1.8GHz Athlon MP. What *I* want to know is why do they still have two serial ports on most computers? I haven't used one in years.
    • The problem is that no one wants to pay for tomorrow's technology today. People design hardware for lowest cost, and that means restrictive designs that we'll outgrow.

      But really, why complain? The fact that you have to upgrade your motherboard and memory, and probably your CPU all at once is nothing compared to the bad old days when all computers were proprietary. Of course, they were simpler and thus more hackable, but you couldn't just upgrade your motherboard. Now there are even ATX PPC boards - You can change your architecture without swapping (many) of your peripherals.

  • Getting old... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Little Dave ( 196090 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2002 @09:16AM (#3601746) Homepage
    Hell, it makes you feel old when 512Mb is being bandied around as the standard memory size. I remember getting all excited about a 512k(!!) trapdoor expansion for my Amiga, for which I paid 100 quid for.

    Oh yeah, and this whole website was fields back then... far as the eye could see. ;)
    • My favorite minor upgrade: buying an extra 128k to max out my IBM clone at 640k! It came in individual chips, too, no easy-to-plug in card!

      :)
    • Hell, it makes you feel old when 512Mb is being bandied around as the standard memory size.

      I hear you. I am sure there are those that have many more stories, but I remember shelling out over 2 grand for my 386DX-33 with 2 MB of RAM and 80MB hard drive. I now have more than 3x the amount of space in my RAM (256M) than I used to have in my hard drive. I must be sleeping - when did 512M become the standard memory size? Crap, I don't even have DDR memory. I am running just a piddly AMD Athlon 900 SLOT processor. I remember when the "internet" was Gopher and FTP. Hey you kids, get off my lawn!! :-)

      • Yeah, the more I think about it, the more things like that come back to me and the more factors of a thousand crop up to haunt me. Example: 250 quid for a 120Mb hard drive in 1994. Compared to an 80Gb hard drive for 90 quid in 2002.

        And I'm still running at about 10% free space at any one time!
      • > I remember when the "internet" was Gopher and FTP. Hey you kids, get off my lawn!! :-)

        Don't forget about archie! google - pffft! :-)

    • Hell, it makes you feel old when 512Mb is being bandied around as the standard memory size. I remember getting all excited about a 512k(!!) trapdoor expansion for my Amiga, for which I paid 100 quid for.


      I remember buying 3 kilobyte memory expansion cartridge with some new BASIC commands (the Super Expander) for VIC-20. I've forgotten the price, though. Anyway, it was nice to have more than 3584 bytes for BASIC programs available ;) (and some seriously nice graphics commands to improve the rather lacking CBM Basic V2.0). Funny, it doesn't feel like almost 20 years have passed since that; I still have that machine and the cartridge around, although I haven't switched it on for a long time to see if it still works.

  • You could be sure to say that the Memory development line isn't exactly following Moores law. But that's okay tough, since that wasn't Moores intension.
  • * TOP SECRET *
    Invest heavily into materials research
    License applicable intellectual property
    Re-tool or build new fab
    Produce more memory than market needs in effort to crowd out competitors
    When all competitors do same thing complain for years how memory market not profitable and any-minute-now prices will have to go up
    Continue to overproduce and cut prices
    Repeat for each advance in memory technology

  • Importance (Score:2, Insightful)

    by coryboehne ( 244614 )
    The importance of faster, cheaper RAM is obvious, however I do find it hard to get excited about a technology that will at best be in new systems in about a year, probably later. RAM speeds have skyrocketed, but unfortunately bus speeds have'nt, unless you're an overclocking guru this RAM just won't mean much to overall performance gains - just yet. But all the same, every step forward is a great step.
  • What with IBM making the G-4s for Mac, and making this chipset, d'you think they could finally bring Macs out of the PC100 world, and get a memory pipeline worth having?

    • Um (Score:1)

      by denjin ( 115496 )
      First, they only make G3s for Apple currently. Also, Macs use PC133, and the newest server line uses DDR. They do need to work on the processor side though, supposedly the CPU itself can't interface with DDR, so a lot of the bandwidth goes unused.
      • partially true, those news Macs with DDR can't actually manage DDR from the CPU to the main mem, only from the "northbridge" to the main mem. Should be addressed when Apple moves to the MPC 7470 CPU (currently using MPC 7455). You're right though, IBM doesn't make G4s, although the "Sahara" G3 apparently DOES support DDR memory bus.

    • The Xserve has a DDR bus.

      The G4 will remain at 133 or 166 MHz because all effort is going into the G5's pipe [eetimes.com].

  • A few facts (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 29, 2002 @09:40AM (#3601882)
    Intro: I am D. C. Sessions, and I'm the chair of JC-16 (one of the committees which participates in the DDR standard). Here are a few facts:

    The two big reasons for the generational change are

    • Voltage change: DDR II is going to 1.8 volts to allow thinner gate oxides and denser, faster devices.
    • Internal timing. First-generation DDR has some architectural timing issues which make it impossible to go much beyond 333 in volume production.

    Yes, this makes for backward-compatibility problems.

    Yes, the Committee (JC-42.3) put a huge amount of work into making DDR-II as backward-compatible as possible

    Yes, we're starting work on DDR-III. You'll have to wait until 2006 or so.

    Target speeds for DDR-II were set at 600 MT/s for fully-loaded systems and 800 MT/s for embedded stuff like graphics.

    The signal-integrity issues for DDR-II are ugly, but we met the margin specs with lots of conservativism thrown in, so once we get hands-on time with systems you'll probably see the numbers exceeded just as the original DDR targets were.

    Flame away. You can get more info at JEDEC [jedec.org] or Advanced Memory International [ami2.com].

    • What exactly is MT/s as you refer to it? It's apparantly Mega data transfers/sec, but I haven't found anything that relates this to more common measurements such as MB/s or similar. (My guess - what it sounds like, with overall bandwidth being MT/s * bus width)

      Apparantly current DDR is running 200-400 MT/s (although the Micron page that had this information was rather odd in and of itself, with higher CAS times giving a higher MT/s), so this is either a significant upgrade (300%) or moderate (50%) if those numbers are right.
  • The actual clock speed is 200mhz and 266 mhz ddr for 400 (PC 3200, @ 3.2 gb/s), and 533 (PC4300 @ 4.3 gb/s), respectively. TheInquirer [theinquirer.net] points this out, along with some more specs. Also, way back on May 2, JEDEC approved the standard. [ebnonline.com]

  • IBM Chipset for which CPU? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ayden ( 126539 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2002 @10:26AM (#3602123) Homepage Journal
    The article says that IBM made a chipset to take advantage the new memory speed, but what CPU does the chipset support? Athlon? P4? G4/G5? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Frye?
      • ...what CPU does the chipset support...
      None as far as I could tell. From the Samsung press release [samsungelectronics.com] it looks as if the chipset IBM developed isn't a "chipset" as you're using the term. You're thinking Northbridge (or MCH in Intelspeak), i.e. a "chipset" that controls your CPU, memory, AGP, IDE, PCI, (and in combo with a Southbridge, or ICH in Intelspeak) USB, Parallel, Serial, ADB, ISA, IrDA, Audio, SmartCard, or whatever.

      The IBM-developed DDR-II chipset in question here is simply a memory controller, i.e. a small (but important) part of the Northbridge in what you're calling a chipset.

  • fucking marketting! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Cyno ( 85911 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2002 @10:28AM (#3602131) Journal
    Gah! I fucking hate marketting! Why can't they just call it QDR, because that's what it is. Quad Data Rate fucking DIMMs. God damn it, motherfucking, sun of a bitch!

    • Re:fucking marketting! (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I believe the Double Data Rate term just refers to the fact that it is clocked on the rising and falling edges. Since those are the only two edges you can have, you can't very well have Quad Data Rate :)
      • Actually you can. You can clock on rising and falling edge, and both 'flat points' of the clock. I've seen this used in some circumstances, and it basically does give you quad pumped... no idea if that's what they're actually using here, though.
    • because the average consumer is becomming confused with what is better/newer than what..
      if they keep changing the name of the ram, people wont know what to buy. by calling it ddr2, the consumer knows its the "sequel" to ddr, and if their motherboard supports it, they can then have an easier time deciding what ram they want...
    • Why can't they just call it QDR

      'Cause there's already something called QDR. See QDR consortium [qdrsram.com]. It's a high speed SRAM with separate input and output data I/O buffers, and 2 tranfers in (write) and 2 transfers out (read) per clock cycle, hence 4 transfers per cycle total. It's fairly popular for packet buffers in routers and switches alike.

    • The data lines are still clocked at DDR, but there are twice as many of them.
  • DDR-II is basically equivalent to on-chip interleaving - the data path is clocked the same but twice as wide. Well, board makers are now doing motherboard-side DDR interleaving themselves - see recent boards based on the ServerWorks GC-LE or Intel E7500 chipsets. Some manufacturers might just decide not to bother with DDR-II.

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