Quad Data RAM

Richard Brewer dug up this news item over at EETimes with word of a company that has come up with Quad Data Memory. It's kinda like DDR, but they DDR'd the DDR to make it QDR (Ok sorta, or not at all, but I wanted to say DDR the DDR). The memory will be on display actually working in just a couple of weeks. The new technology apparently matches what Rambus has been touting as their one advantage over other memory technologies all this time. 4 bits per cycle. Oh and guess what, its cheaper.

Rambus Inc. has already shown how it can pump out 4 bits per clock cycle with its future Quad Rambus Signaling Level, but Kentron's approach is fundamentally different. Rambus uses a chip interface technology that splits the voltage so that bits are represented in four voltage increments at every clock. QBM relies on the use of an external switching mechanism to toggle between two devices so that one bit comes out every quarter clock cycle. [...] Skeptics may question the efficacy of running the memory with such tight timing parameters, McComas said, but that could be solved by using DDR parts that are rated faster than they are actually run in the system.