Via and ATI team up on XDDR memory
But it's a secret
By Fuad Abazovic in Canada: Monday 20 September 2004, 07:39
ATI DOESN'T WANT TO talk about it but we learned from more than a few people that ATI and Via are involved in standardising a novel memory standard.
People in Canada are keeping schtum about the memory marchitecture, but as Wil Harris said last week, ATI is always involved in inventing new memory techniques. Check his story here.
The new XDDR standard doesn't have anything to do with the previous announcement. It's actually memory that can be used for both graphic and system memory.
You might remember QBM (Quad Band Memory) marchitecture. Via was very committed to this marchitecture and we spoke about it many times here, here and here.
That standard was supposed to double memory performance and with small technology part to make 533MHz modules from existing DDR 266MHz. We don’t know what's going on with this marchitecture, but its future is not bright. In the last three years we haven’t seen any technology presentation and DDR 2 is already there with speeds up to 667MHz already.
Nevertheless, XDDR a new marchitecture should be regarded as a doubled DDR 2 or should be say a Quad DDR memory standard. Theoretically it will generate four Bits per cycle, versus only two clocks per cycle that is in current DDR and DDR 2 memory modules.
So, theoretically, XDDR might end up twice as fast offering twice as much bandwidth from current memory. Thinking about this marchitecture, you have to bear in mind that doubling the current DDR 2 and GDDR3 memory bandwidths could be warmly accepted in graphic circles - well at least in ATI's. You never know how Nvidia might react to it but I don’t see a warm welcome as it might have the ATI mark of the Canadian Wastes on it.
Apart from using is for graphic games I can see broad usage of XDDR memory as system memory but I am not sure what the commissariat at standard body Jedec feels about it. We know that ATI has one important memory chap one who is an active member of the Jedec board, but we haven’t had a pleasure to meet him and ask him about it.
At least on paper, it looks good but as we have been careful with QBM we should be very careful with the new XDDR memory marchitecture.
Via and ATI together in a smooch? Well, stranger things can happen.
*** I know that not many people like the Inquirer but I found this sort of interesting. I've seen some articles about XDDR but was wondering if this architechture has so much promise what is the hold up? Is it just to expensive to implement? Whats the benefits if any over DDR 2 and GDDR3?
**** There is no luck... Only the will and desire to succeed !
But it's a secret
By Fuad Abazovic in Canada: Monday 20 September 2004, 07:39
ATI DOESN'T WANT TO talk about it but we learned from more than a few people that ATI and Via are involved in standardising a novel memory standard.
People in Canada are keeping schtum about the memory marchitecture, but as Wil Harris said last week, ATI is always involved in inventing new memory techniques. Check his story here.
The new XDDR standard doesn't have anything to do with the previous announcement. It's actually memory that can be used for both graphic and system memory.
You might remember QBM (Quad Band Memory) marchitecture. Via was very committed to this marchitecture and we spoke about it many times here, here and here.
That standard was supposed to double memory performance and with small technology part to make 533MHz modules from existing DDR 266MHz. We don’t know what's going on with this marchitecture, but its future is not bright. In the last three years we haven’t seen any technology presentation and DDR 2 is already there with speeds up to 667MHz already.
Nevertheless, XDDR a new marchitecture should be regarded as a doubled DDR 2 or should be say a Quad DDR memory standard. Theoretically it will generate four Bits per cycle, versus only two clocks per cycle that is in current DDR and DDR 2 memory modules.
So, theoretically, XDDR might end up twice as fast offering twice as much bandwidth from current memory. Thinking about this marchitecture, you have to bear in mind that doubling the current DDR 2 and GDDR3 memory bandwidths could be warmly accepted in graphic circles - well at least in ATI's. You never know how Nvidia might react to it but I don’t see a warm welcome as it might have the ATI mark of the Canadian Wastes on it.
Apart from using is for graphic games I can see broad usage of XDDR memory as system memory but I am not sure what the commissariat at standard body Jedec feels about it. We know that ATI has one important memory chap one who is an active member of the Jedec board, but we haven’t had a pleasure to meet him and ask him about it.
At least on paper, it looks good but as we have been careful with QBM we should be very careful with the new XDDR memory marchitecture.
Via and ATI together in a smooch? Well, stranger things can happen.
*** I know that not many people like the Inquirer but I found this sort of interesting. I've seen some articles about XDDR but was wondering if this architechture has so much promise what is the hold up? Is it just to expensive to implement? Whats the benefits if any over DDR 2 and GDDR3?
**** There is no luck... Only the will and desire to succeed !
