Products on display included motherboards made by Asustek Computer, Micro-Star International (MSI), Foxconn Electronics (the registered trade name of Hon Hai Precision Industry) and Intel's own Enterprise Platforms and Services Division (EPSD).
Expected to be launched in November, the Granite Bay (E7205) and Placer chipsets are designed for workstations, while the Plumas 533 (E7501) chipset will be introduced for server products. All three chipsets adopt the new dual-channel DDR platform, instead of the RDRAM standard Intel previously used for its workstation and server lines.
Although Intel has stressed that the RDRAM-based chipsets will still stay at its high-end desktop chipset lines, things are expected to change shortly when the chip giant introduces its dual-channel Springdale chipset to replace the current RDRAM-supporting 850E as a high-end product in the second quarter of 2003.
Despite the change, Rambus was still present as a major sponsor at this year's APAC IDF. Joseph Lin, director of marketing and applications for Rambus Taiwan, said that Rambus still has great business potential in non-PC markets, such as the game console sector. He noted that Sony's new PlayStation 3 (PS3) will continue adopting the RDRAM design. As for the PC market, Lin said that Rambus will keep working with chipset designers and will not drop out of the sector altogether.
Source: DigiTimes