Intel said to stop manufacturing RDRAM-based chipsets

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.

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