1999: Up and Down

January. But the golden age had its problems, too. In particular, DR DRAM design was far from perfection in the beginning of the year. We should bear in mind that DR DRAM is a technology, an interface rather than a chip design. So, the manufacturers had to learn almost on the fly and introduce all the re-designs on the fly, too. DR DRAM was confronted by obvious rejection from workstation and server makers, as no chipset maker supported this memory. Not a single one! Although they were more numerous there, than in the desktop market. Even Intel had to develop a server chipset with DDR DRAM support! Expensive memory with questionable advantage in performance was of no use here and Intel's word wasn't that weighing: they couldn't force their position in this sector. i840? A server chipset that can only support 2GB of memory? You must be kidding!

February. But the real problems emerged a little later when the fortune turned its back on Intel/Rambus as if punishing for their excessive initial optimism. It all started back in February, with the rumors that only some Camino Lite with 600MHz DR DRAM support is scheduled for June. Samsung said it had been planned beforehand, Hitachi - "we know nothing about a 600MHz DR DRAM". Well, they were not quite frank here, as we remember well that 600MHz DR DRAM first appeared in November and was supposed to become a mass product for PCs.

And there was one more Intel Developer Forum coming. A year before, at IDF'97, the promotion of DR DRAM was announced. A heap of work had been done in the past year, but… The launch of i820 was delayed by three months, until September, because of the technical problems and low production capacities by the memory makers. Only one of the four offered frequency generators complied with the specs, only five of eight memory makers who claimed their support of the new memory type, showcased ready memory modules, but no module of all had been validated. Moreover, the only chipset supporting DR DRAM didn't feel that well. In addition, there emerged i815 with 133MHz system bus, although supporting only PC100 SDRAM. The escape way, no doubt.

And the hell broke loose: i820/DR DRAM was battered from all sides. They chastised all: heat production, unreliability, high cost compared to SDRAM and the licensing fees. Voices from the audience: DR DRAM brings no advantages to uni-processor systems while its cost is too high. The competitors raised their heads. February, VIA announced officially the establishment of a developer group working on PC133, which started its work in the middle of January.

March. Another blow followed. In the end of March the public learned about the bug Intel found in DR DRAM designs: CMOS truncated bit, an error that can stop data read from DRAM registers. Yes, the Rambus' approach implies that the logic is directly integrated into the memory chips and this may cause these things. When questioned, DRAM makers had no definite answer and pointed at the item in the DR DRAM licensing contract that forbade them to criticize the technology.