Three Minutes with Rambus CEO Harold Hughes

Monday, October 29, 2007 10:00 americium PDT

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, the memory bit engineering developer, is looking to the hereafter human race of multimedia system as the manner for its XDR memory bits to happen their manner into more than mainstream products.

The memory engineering is currently used mainly in game consoles, but Nipponese dram (dynamic RAM) shaper unveiled a rapid dram bit based on XDR technology, the . The bits are aimed at game consoles, HDTVs (high-definition televisions), PCs, waiters and workstations.

But one knocking against the company is that while its merchandises may be used in some high end applications, they have got not trickled down into the mainstream because they be too much compared to DDR2 (double date, 2nd generation) dram and other technologies. Regardless, Rambus chief executive officer , sees 2008 as a jailbreak twelvemonth for Rambus engineering to come in higher volume production as it wins over some high-definition television clients.

He said people should also be on the lookout man for XDR engineering to do some headroom into cellular telephones and other mobile devices.

Hughes was in for the Rambus Developer Forum, and discussed new merchandises in an interview with the IDG News Service.

IDGNS: What are the major merchandise countries Rambus will concentrate on in the adjacent twelvemonth for its XDR memory technology?

Harold Hughes: I believe 2008 will see a few large [technology trends] moving forward in computers, HDTVs and the game players, and some of the neatest material will come up out on cell phones. Those are four marketplaces where Rambus is well positioned, so we trust to have got a great year.

IDGNS: What is Rambus workings on in the mobile market? Handsets, ultramobile PCs?

Hughes: Consumers desire everything that they have got on a desktop in one of these things (he throws up an ) and obviously the bandwidth demands are very, very high relative to what used to be the lawsuit for a simple small phone, and all that demands to be supplied at incredibly low power. Well, we've made what I believe are some amazing discoveries in low-power engineering that are in many lawsuits as much as 80 percentage over existing technology. In applications where you're using full movement pictures (TV on mobile phones) much less powerfulness with full movement videos.

We're looking forward to making our grade in the low-power and mobile market. Our attack will be to utilize the bandwidth cores available with XDR, but to utilize our very low powerfulness interfaces to drive those, and to make that not only through our providers but also to look to some of the major participants in the cell telephone industry to convey them to marketplace in 2008 or 2009. It most likely won't be XDR as we cognize it, but it might be derived from XDR. It have got to be high bandwidth and extremely low powerfulness and it have to have low packaging cost.

IDGNS: Can you give an thought of what you intend by low power?

Hughes: We have got introduced some very interesting low-power technology. We set out a [research paper] and we showed that we could present 2.2 Gbps at 100 milliwatts. Mind-bogglingly low, 2.2 milliwatts per gigabit per second. We could run it off two-double AA batteries. The gag we was that we would seek to acquire it to run off of a potato. We passed 3,600 terabits of information through our interface with two-AA batteries, which is the equivalent of 100 DVDs.

IDGNS: Why make you believe XDR suits the high-definition television market?

Hughes: The XDR merchandises are doing very well in the gambling merchandises and we'll speak about the high-definition television market. It's truly astonishing the sort of calculate demands there, but it's also a consumer electronics merchandise so it's got all the issues of cost and it's also the size, the electronic migration, the fans and stuff, so it's really bandwidth per device, and that's where XDR really stand ups out, in bandwidth per device. Such that with one or two XDR devices, you can acquire adequate to cover with the 5-10 Gbps of bandwidth these telecastings are using. That's where working with companies like Elpida and other licencees we can have got got an adequate supply of XDR so we can make great things in the high-definition television market.

IDGNS: What personal computer tendencies will assist pushing more Rambus memory into PCs?

Hughes: The new coevals of computing machines is going to have these multiple core processors, which are just driving incredibly attractive and interesting PCs. What's interesting is the nature of the cores. They are not only standard calculate cores, but they are also artwork cores. For us, we're very happy on multiple levels. That's going to bring forth a greater demand for memory bandwidth. In particular, the multi-core processors that have got got calculate and artwork have at odds demands insofar as the memory architecture is concerned. The computer science necessitates capacity and artwork necessitates bandwidth. Rambus have A merchandise called the XDR which offers multiple GBS of capacity and quite singular bandwidth, and in fact Elpida have productized a 4.8GHz part, so that's a pretty rapid product.

IDGNS: Rambus looks to be doing well in merchandises at the top-end of the market, such as as game consoles, but how is the company workings to aim the mainstream and lower-cost markets?

Hughes: Keep in head that we believe that embedded in DDR2 is no little portion of Rambus engineering and that unfortunately is the topic of tons of judicial proceeding and there's no indicant that's going to halt in the close future. I believe that's always inevitable with our concern model. I believe that's almost inevitable given our concern model, putting aside the judicial proceeding facets of it. For a 400-person company to have got got impact and for information science to have value, you must work out jobs well out into the future. Those jobs are only going to be usable initially be a relatively little subset, but as that then begins to proliferate through more than supply and costs come up down, then you see those merchandises dribble down to the $200 laptop.

I don't see that that theoretical account is going to change. We are working on memories that have got truly lurching performance. Initially those volition probably be existent parts incorporating as many of our characteristics as possible, but by definition because of their public presentation there will be a limited figure of applications that demand it, but Ten figure of old age later, not only will those distinct parts travel cheaper and likely transmigrate into higher volumes, but the ingredients in those parts are very likely to go into very low-performance, low-cost applications that are used widely.

IDGNS: What else make you see for 2008 that's big?

Hughes: Games will better dramatically. The software system development kits are continuing to better such as that I believe games will be able to take advantage of more than of the cycles. You cognize how they cat scan a encephalon when its thinking? Well Iodine suspect if they were to make the same thing with a cell processor on current games, it would demo that a batch of those junction transistors aren't being turned on, especially when you're using an abstracted development code.

Ultimately [game developers] will larn how to directly turn to hardware more than than and more and I believe you'll see those games coming out more in 2008 and they'll probably be spectacular, frankly. Of course, I've given up on games. Competing with your boy is, well, it's so humiliating. You're getting killed in a game and you don't even cognize what's going on.