DEMAND FOR the next generation DRAM chip, DDR3 has spiked recently despite claims that it is only marginally better than DDR2.
DDR3 prices have jumped to between $1.50 to $1.70 per 1Gb chip, and prices will likely continue to rise in July, according to DRAMeXchange Technology.
Analysts and other people we chat with down the pub think that demand for DDR3 chips could boost their share of the market to as much as 30 per cent by the end of this year.
They claim that DDR3 could replace DDR2 as the mainstream market standard sometime next year.
It seems that if this is true, many are believing press releases that say the chips use up to 60 per cent less power than their predecessors while offering almost twice the bandwidth.
However this is not really born out by the benchmarks. It seems that most performance gains are marginal at best.
Computerworld however quotes Samsung as seeing DDR3 knocking DDR2 out of first place in the DRAM market by the end of next year’s first quarter with over a 50 per cent share.
The chipmakers point out that DDR3 is already cheap, and the faster production increases, the quicker prices for the chips will come down even more. This is counter-intuitive though, as DDR3 is being seen as the saviour of an industry that cannot make money out of DDR2 and is hoping that higher prices for newer technology will give it some profits again.
At the moment DDR2 has fallen to $1.00 per 1Gb chip, from $1.34 in May. Performance and power claims from the memory manufacturers alone might not be enough for budget conscious firms trying to save cash.
If DDR3 fails to live up to the chipmakers’ claims then buyers will be clamouring for cheaper chips and DDR2 could remain the dominant memory standard longer than expected.
Some analysts deny that the upcoming Windows 7 launch will be the saviour of the memory chip industry. Low end versions of Windows 7 work well enough with only half a gigabyte of RAM, which is not enough to trigger massive demand for memory.
It is also unlikely that most users will notice much difference between DDR2 and DDR3 anyway.
Source: TheInquirer
No related posts.
