1996: Going Up

Don't tell anyone until the right time! Here starts the most thrilling part of our story. In June 1996, Rambus sends JEDEC a letter, which tells of the company's quitting the organization. The form of the letter was like "we quit and won't pay dues as our business plan doesn't agree with JEDEC's policy in respect to patents. By the way, we've got a few here: number such and such". Not a word that all this concerns SDRAM. And that's exactly when the PC66/100 specs had been polished off and the manufacturers started producing chips.

For now, Rambus had secured its rear and got to promoting RDRAM as a surer way to profits. We might never know the details, but anyway, in November 1996, after a few years of negotiations, Intel signed an agreement with Rambus to the purpose that it would promote Direct Rambus DRAM specification to become a widely accepted standard. This memory type was collaboratively developed by both companies. In particular, Intel was to develop a PC chipset with DR DRAM support in the following two years, that is, by the end of 1998.

Of course, Intel had a significant financial interest in the deal, but there is one more thing worth mentioning. Intel regarded and still regards Direct DRAM as the most perfect memory type existing and still thinks that it would be quite nice if it won the market due to its real competitive advantages and not by compulsion. More to that, the transition to the 0.13micron technological process has made this memory type widely available… But back to the past.

1997: Still Going Up

But back to the past, back to the revolution. In the processor market Intel puts off open Socket-7 in favor of proprietary Slot-1. In the graphics market Intel replaces PCI with AGP, although the latter was as open as the former. The obvious complement would be a transition to a new memory type. It's much easier to change the whole, than parts of it, especially as the new CPUs and graphics bus required something more solid than PC133 SDRAM.

But this something was already there! A year before, in 1996, two variants of further SDRAM evolution had shaped themselves: Double Data Rate DRAM and SyncLink DRAM. Big memory makers started developing designs of DDR DRAM chips. The SLDRAM consortium was established, Micron was actively promoting this memory specification. Memory makers knew what they were capable of better than Intel and their memory evolution plans were focused on performance growth and, unlike the Intel/Rambus suggestions, were based on the existing developments and infrastructure. The future proved to be on the DDR side as it won the market, while SLDRAM-relating technologies were used when developing DDR-II. Anyway, let's not rush ahead of time.

To cut it short, in November 1996 Intel took DR RDAM's side and announced that this memory type was going to come in place of PC100 SDRAM. If we recall the overall situation then - there was nothing besides PC100 in the market and Intel's shadow behind DR DRAM looked really impressive - we should agree that this memory type had all chances to become the No.1. Everyone then still remembered the coordinative and leading role Intel played in the PC100 development. That's why Rambus' enter into the stock exchange turned to be the success of the year: 98% growth on the very first day. Well, no one could have doubted it, actually.

There was a period of calm, which lasted several months, and then we witnessed the beginning of public DR DRAM advance. In the middle of October 1997, at Microprocessor Forum, Intel and Rambus announced their intention to launch the technology into the market in 1999. This was connected only with 800MHz DR DRAM with 1.6GB/sec bandwidth. They promised the RIMM modules with the capacity from 32MB to 1GB, with physical and thermal characteristics equal to those of SDRAM. It was also proudly mentioned that most memory makers had licensed the technology already.

Complete success. And it was a success, really. LG Semicon, Samsung, Mitsubishi - all and sundry - were licensing DR DRAM. Well, they were accustomed to it. Production diversification is quite familiar thing in the field and it's common practice when a company produces a few memory types at a time, sometimes even targeted at the same market sector. Of course, no one was going to miss out a perspective technology, which might win the market. And of course, no one was going to wholly devote itself to DR DRAM: the companies that sang praises to DR DRAM were at the same time promoting either DDR DRAM or SLDRAM or even both.