DRAM Bottleneck??

[WOFAT]

I am interested in what is happening with memory in PCs...with the gigabyte microprocessor about to be released, will it create a huge bottleneck if the DRAM is not up to speed (no pun intended). I saw Micron and Rambus had huge gains today in the stock market because the price of the memory boards is going up....is this becasue of a shortage of storage chips created by the recent earthqakes in Asia or the fact PC makers will have to make more memory boards?? I am confused...if they can make these super gigabyte microprocessors, isn't there a super gigabyte memory chip out there on the market?? forgive my ignorance whn it cmes to PC harware/software tems, I am a novice at best...trying to learn more

[AuraEdge]

Doesnt quite work like that
The term for Processors would be Hertz, for cycles per second, and were about to scratch the GigaHertz barrier.

RAM chips come in Megabytes, a byte being a single plain character of information or code.

The speed of RAM right now is PC100, or PC133, whereas RAMBUS, or RDRAM is PC600-800. The PC stands for the amount of Megahertz that a RAM chip can officially go.

The thing is that RDRAM isnt much better than SDRAM because RDRAM costs an arm and a leg, and that RDRAM uses smaller bursts of information faster (16bits at 800Mhz), while SDRAM uses bigger burts of info in slower speeds (64bits at 100 or 133Mhz).

Theres a new type coming out, called DDR SDRAM. The DDR stands for Double Data Rate, meaning that data is transfered on the rising and falling edges of a clock cycle, meaning 2 transfers per Mhz. This RAM is rated 200 and 266, (64bits at 100 or 133Mhz, at 2 transfers per Mhz).

By doing the math, the PC266 DDR SDRAM has the best transfer rate of the three, and will probably cost alot less than RDRAM...However you will need a new board archetecture to support it (like RDRAM), and you will need to wait til it comes out.
DDR SDRAM seems like the future to me.

Your original point was very valid tho, that Memory is a major bottleneck that needs to be loosened.