SIS AND ALI ARE desperately scrabbling to produce 800MHz "Springdale" compatible chipsets to keep up with Intel but so far haven't concluded licensing deals for the technology, a report claims today. As we reported last November, Intel changed the goal posts on future Pentium 4 technology, and said the front side bus on its future Springdale chipsets would run at 800MHz rather than 667MHz.
That, according to a report in Digitimes today, means that SIS and ALi – each of which has a Pentium 4 licence agreements with Intel – won't show their versions of 800MHz chipsets for fear Intel might stomp one of its mighty feet on them. Via is also understood to have plans to introduce 800MHz front side bus Pentium 4 chipsets, but as it is already engaged in worldwide litigation with the chip giant, proposes to steam ahead, regardless.
Meanwhile, EB News reports that Rambus will soon introduce four channel memory technology using 1200MHz RDRAM chips. Unfortunately for Rambus, Intel now has extensive plans to rely on the double data rate (DDR) memory and while it will still produce its 850E RDRAM chipset for some time, the roadmap points in a different direction from the Los Altos HQ of the intellectual property outfit. SIS already has an RDRAM chipset supporting 1066MHz memory and plans to introduce a further chipset during the course of this year
News source: The Inq
