Intel to stop producing Rambus chipsets

Intel has notified hardware developers that it placed two chipsets based on memory technology from Rambus on a product discontinuance schedule, setting a date for the end of Intel’s association with Rambus’ current memory technology.

The company notified its developers in a “product notification change” e-mail distributed earlier this month that shipments of the 850E chipset for desktops and the 860 chipset for workstations would cease in May 2004. The move is just a formality, as Intel has demonstrated its commitment to DDR (double data rate) memory with the launch of the 875 chipset in April and the 865 chipset Wednesday, both of which support DDR400 memory over RDRAM (Rambus dynamic RAM).

“It’s real clear that our focus for performance and mainstream [PCs] is dual DDR400. The next step is DDRII, and we anticipate seeing elements of that come into play in 2004,” said George Alfs, an Intel spokesman. “At this time, we’ve made no announcements of new chipsets that support RDRAM,” he said.

A few years ago, Intel strongly advocated RDRAM as the future of PC memory technology, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst with Insight 64 in Saratoga, California. It introduced two RDRAM chipsets for the Pentium 4 processor before finally introducing an SDRAM (synchronous dynamic RAM) chipset in September of 2001.

The delay allowed chipset vendors like Via Technologies and Serverworks to gain market share with their SDRAM chipsets in 2001, although Intel has made back most of those gains from Via on the desktop side, Brookwood said.

RDRAM was considered a high-performance technology when it was introduced, but SDRAM (synchronous dynamic RAM) was much cheaper and when DDR SDRAM was introduced, the performance gap closed.

RDRAM is currently used in several consumer electronics devices and gaming platforms, Brookwood said. “But as far as mainstream PC or server technology, I think that window has closed,” he said.

Rambus is involved in legal wrangling over whether SDRAM vendors have violated Rambus patents with their products or whether Rambus should have disclosed those patents during the SDRAM standard-setting process. It is currently defending itself in a case before the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over those allegations and won a reprieve earlier this year when an appeals court reversed a judgment of fraud against the company.

While sales of RDRAM have dwindled, the Los Altos, Calif.-based company hopes to require SDRAM vendors to pay it royalties once the legal proceedings are over, and is working on next-generation memory and system buses.