What if Intel Penryn uses Rambus XDR, eh?

ONE OF THE best kept secrets in the industry is what special sauce Intel will put in Penryn, the 45 nanometre shrink of Merom.

While that is a story for another day, it's rumoured that the big change is not in the chip, but in the chipset, or one variant of it. The speculation is running that there will be versions for the server and desktop that use Rambus XDR memory.

Let me be the first to say that if this is true, it is about #(*&$# time someone used this memory for something useful, on paper anyway, it looks to be the 'better way'.

On a more strategic level, perhaps Intel dummied AMD and Sun to commit to FBD and DDR3 just about the time Intel dumps it.

Again, it's speculation, but if it's true it's real devious guys, pat yourself on the back. µ