Intel said to stop manufacturing RDRAM-based chipsets

Source: Digi Times

Intel recently decided to cease production of its 850E and 860 chipset, moving further away from the Rambus DRAM (RDRAM) standard, motherboard sources revealed. The 850E and 860 chipsets are Intel’s two RDRAM-based products, designed for the desktop and server/workstation sectors, respectively.

The growing trend for low-price PCs has boosted the popularity of DDR memory, Intel’s local agents said. Overall, they expect Intel’s decision to have little impact on the market, as RDRAM chipsets primarily target the top-end market and Intel is expected to continue meeting client demand if required.

Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS), currently the only other RDRAM chipset supplier, is unlikely to suffer much from Intel’s production disruption, industry observers noted. The Taiwanese chipset company launched its first RDRAM-supporting chipset, the R658, in July 2002 and is planning to introduce another, the R659, in the third quarter of this year.

Once a strong supporter of the RDRAM standard, Intel has decided to gradually shift its products to the more popular and cheaper DDR platform in the past two years.

After the release of its new 865 series (Springdale) chipsets on May 21, which will adopt dual-channel DDR400, Intel will move to the DDRII platform for its next-generation Grantsdale chipsets. But following its Granite Peak program, which ensures transition stability for six quarters, Intel will not introduce DDRII-supporting products such as the Grantsdale chipsets until the second quarter of 2004. However, as DDR400 has only begun entering the market mainstream, module makers said that might still be too early for Intel to adopt DDRII.