SDRAM vs. RDRAM, Facts and Fantasy

Price is undoubtedly the most controversial aspect of RDRAMs today. Many articles have been written citing the high price of RDRAM relative to SDRAM in the retail market. The high price is often attributed to factors including low yields, large die sizes, the cost of new equipment, and royalties charged by Rambus. However, several of these explanations have recently been called into question. An interesting point is that the price premium for RIMMs in the retail channel is higher than the premium for RIMMs purchased from the major OEMs. The Dell website, for example, allows prospective buyers to configure systems with varying amounts of RDRAM. The cost of upgrading a system to include an additional 128 MB RIMM module is much lower than for purchases made through retail channels, and has even been dropping recently. This calls into question the exact cause(s) of RDRAM price premiums. Central to this controversy is the difference between price (what a consumer pays for RIMMs) and cost (what it costs a manufacturer to produce RIMMs).

A recent article in PC World states that the price premium OEMs pay for RIMMs is much lower than the premiums in the retail channels, suggesting that the inherent costs of RDRAM are much lower than initially reported. While it is true that the high-speed interface on RDRAMs results in die sizes that are larger than comparable SDRAMs, the pricing information in this article indicates that yields are not unusually low, and that RDRAM dies are not dramatically larger. If either of these were true, then one would expect RDRAM manufacturing costs to be much, much higher. In turn, these costs would be passed on to the OEMs, who are the largest consumers of RDRAMs today.

The article also points out that development costs are being recouped, and that there are opportunity costs associated with producing RDRAMs instead of SDRAMs. This was true of the transition from EDO to SDRAM memory, and is true again today. Any new technology has lower yields than the incumbent technology, and has development costs that must be recovered, so one would expect some premium to be paid initially for RDRAMs. But this article suggests that the cost of manufacturing RDRAMs is not the reason for the RDRAM price premiums in the retail market.

Skip To Page 1 Introduction 2 Rambus Direct RDRAM 3 Conventional Memory Systems 4 RDRAM Benefits 5 Reducing System Cost • 6 RDRAM Pricing 7 RDRAM Pricing Continued 8 RDRAM Performance 9 RDRAM Performance Continued 10 System Performance 11 RDRAM Power Consumption 12 Benchmark Applications 13 BAPCo SYSmark 2000 14 Benchmark Setup 15 Benchmark Results Intel 440BX 16 Benchmark Results VIA 694X Apollo Pro 133A 17 Benchmark Results Intel i820 18 Benchmark Evaluation 19 Conclusion

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