Intel Corp has been softening its position over support for synchronous DRAM memory as an alternative to Rambus Inc’s RDRAM over the last few months, and yesterday confirmed that it would be offering an improved method of supporting SDRAM through its forthcoming Camino chipset. During its earnings call with analysts yesterday, Intel said that Camino, the delayed 820 chipset, is now on track to ship later this quarter. It will enable .25 micron and .18 micron Pentium III processors to support RDRAM – still its preferred choice – but also 100MHz and 133MHz SDRAM chips.
While it was previously possible to support SDRAMs through Camino via a converter riser card for RIMM/DIMM memory modules, motherboard suppliers had complained that the result was both expensive and slow. A few months ago Intel came up with an alternative method, in the shape of an MTH memory transformer hub bridge chip. Revised boards are now expected to provide two DIMM slots for SDRAM and two RIMM slots for RDRAM.
Motherboard manufacturers are said to have had problems dealing with the high frequency RDRAM interfaces, affecting stability, and most have been complaining about the high costs of RDRAM. With royalties owed to both Intel and Rambus, a price premium of up to 50% compared to SDRAM is expected by some commentators. There are said to have been four changes to the Camino board design guide during the development period. Intel insisted yesterday that support for SDRAM has been in the plans for a long time.
During its earnings call, Intel also revealed that the Merced processor has now been taped out, and that it is on track to delivers samples to OEMs this quarter. Eight way Pentium Xeon systems using the Profusion chipset, now a quarter and a half late, will ship in volume during the third quarter. Profusion enables two four processor standard high volume boards to be coupled together. And Intel says it has already begun shipments of its .25 micron 600MHz Pentium III desktop chip, due to be announced next month.
Explaining the recently announced delay of its .18 micron, 600MHz Coppermine chip (CI No 3,685), Intel said that its performance expectations on .25 micro had risen faster than anticipated, and as a result the revised .18 micron desktop chip performance expectations hadn’t been achieved. Coppermine is now expected to emerge in November (CI No 3,685) and Intel confirmed yesterday that it will ship the chips in the second half. It said it was still on target to shift its entire processor line to .18 micron process technology by the third quarter of next year.
