PCI Express : reduced sales forecast ? ATI’s result Zero Buffer DDR for OCZ

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PCI Express : reduced sales forecast ?   Posted on 07/10/2004 at 18:21 by Marc

	According to DigiTimes, ATI is now planning on 25% of the market sales for PCI Express graphic cards. The first sales forecast were higher in the region of 40%, and has been clearly reduced. PCI Express Retail sales aren’t as successful as expected and barely reach 10% of sales. However it is not surprising as the top of the line cards are almost unobtainable and the middle range so far hadn’t a great efficiency/price ratio prix (GeForce PCX 5900, ATI Radeon X600 XT). Hopefully with the GeForce 6600 GT and the upcoming X700 the situation might change. OEM is the most dynamic area with 25 to 30% of computers sold with a PCI Express graphic cards.

ATI’s result   Posted on 07/10/2004 at 15:38 by Marc

	ATI has just announced a $572.2 million turnover for their third financial quarter ending last August 31. This result is 50.3% higher than last year and 16.4% higher than the previous quarter. Despite a 33.8% gross profit, 1.8 point lower than a year ago, the net margin has improved to 61.1 millions instead of 22.2 millions one year ago. Last quarter profits were $48.6 Millions. For the current quarter ATI is expecting a $600 to $640 millions turnover.

Zero Buffer DDR for OCZ   Posted on 07/10/2004 at 10:44 by Marc

	OCZ has just announced in collaboration with Inphi Corporation a new memory called Zero-Buffer DDR, or ZB-DDR. Before getting to the heart of the matter, some background on Unbuffered and Registered memory is required. With Unbuffered standard memory, each memory chips is managed independently by the computer memory controller. For Registered memory, the memory controller communicates with a PLL/Zero Delay Clock Buffer (for clock signal) and some registers (for addresses and commands) managing the chips. What it the interest of Registered memories? Increasing the signal reliability and the number of chips managed in a single computer. So it is possible to have more memory modules or memory modules with a higher capacity. Registered memories are however slower because registers require one clock cycle. For the ZB-DDR, OCZ has decided to use one of the Registered memory functionality, a PLL/Zero Delay Clock Buffer of the Inphi Corporation. OCZ announces that with this new functionality, this memory will have the stability of the Registered memory without the performance fall due to the registers. Of course the ZB-DDR memory won’t have the specific advantage of the standard Registered memory: the possibility to use additional memory modules on a single computer. OCZ hasn’t currently yet the type of memory modules equipped with this technology. However as the Inphi Zero Delay Clock Buffer will be dedicated to DDR2-400, 533, 667 and 800 memory modules, this should probably be the DDR-533 or 667.