Hardware news: XDR
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Rambus watched its RDRAM lose the market in favor of DDR. DDR3 is supposed to be the next hot memory type, but Rambus has an answer for that: XDR. Will it fade like its big brother? Maybe not, because it has more going for it, including that radical new processor you may have been hearing about, called the Cell. Keep reading to learn more about XDR and the Cell.
Is XDR the future?
Do you remember when DDR was released? Were you confused by DDR speeds? There’s DDR400, which runs at 200 MHz, which is equal to PC3200. I hope you got that; now let’s look at DDR2. This is the next step up from DDR. DDR2 will run up to 800 MHz. Sounds fast enough for a while, doesn’t it? The fastest CPUs only run at 233 MHz, so why do we need faster RAM?
There is no need for faster RAM yet, but computer speeds are quickly increasing. So wouldn’t DDR3 be a logical choice for the next RAM after DDR2? Well, yes, but there is another new memory type that is very promising. The new memory is called eXtreme Data Rate (XDR), and was developed by Rambus.
Rambus, does that name sound familiar? I hope it does. Rambus had another type of memory called RDRAM. RDRAM was supposed to replace SDRAM, but it didn’t at that task. While there were chipsets that supported this RAM, DDR quickly stormed the market, and RDRAM disappeared from the scene. Will their new RAM follow the same road, or will it come flying out of the gate? Only time will tell, but we will look into XDR and why it might succeed.
The basics
Rambus is hoping that their new XDR memory takes off in computer memory as well as other devices such as gaming systems and digital TVs. The applications of the memory may range to different directions, but it will all work basically the same. There are five main elements of XDR.
- DRAM
- Memory Controller
- IO Cell
- Interconnect
- Clock Generator
Next: DRAM, Memory Controller, and IO Cell >>
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