Apparently, there are still a lot of mainboards and chipsets with SDRAM support in stocks of chipset designers and mainboard producers. Therefore, as this web-site claims, SDR SDRAM powered systems will still be on the market for another quarter or even a bit more.

Intel faced fierce competition from Taiwanese core-logic developers VIA Technologies and Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) this year, in an effort to offer more advanced products than the rivals, all three companies introduced more and more powerful chipsets. As a result, the core-logic industry this year made a tremendous step forward. On the other hand, due to weak demand on personal computers, mainboard makers have a lot of difficulties with selling their products on time, thus, they have to make price reductions or even stock some products hoping that they will be able to sell them sometimes in future. Given that the demand on PCs is projected to be weak in December, January and February at least, personal computer vendors have to lower the prices on their products in order to attract attention of the customers. Since SDR SDRAM memory is sometimes two times cheaper compared to DDR SDRAM, and there are a lot of inexpensive mainboards with SDR SDRAM support, a lot of system integrators are going to offer their clients systems with SDR SDRAM memory inside.

As Taiwanese mainboard makers sell the remaining stock of SDR intended products, memory traders enjoy the rise of demand on such type of memory. Furthermore, average spot price on certain kinds of SDR SDRAM devices started to rise last week.

Basically, this seems to be the last opportunity to close-out all SDR products in mass quantities. When Intel unveils its mainstream dual-channel DDR SDRAM-supporting chipsets in the second quarter next year, their current single-channel DDR SDRAM core-logic families will become entry-level solutions and there will be no space for less attractive SDR SDRAM intended devices on the market.

I wonder if chipset designers will also experience the rise of sales at this time. In case market acceptance of the newly launched mainboards with SDR SDRAM memory support will be relatively high, some system integrators and their OEM manufacturers may buy additional core-logic devices for their SDRAM platforms.