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The Bumpy Road To DDR400

The first step towards DDR400 or PC3200 was the ratification of the DDR333 specs. Originally conceived around some different layout and packaging characteristics, the PC2700 or DDR333 specs encompassed BGA (ball grid array) instead of TSOP (tiny small outline package) for the discreet components and consequently a different trace routing scheme. Suffice it to say that BGA vs. TSOP is one of the most misrepresented issues in the DRAM industry. Briefly, BGA does not improve the signaling characteristics or quality, the actual bottleneck is still in the bond-wires, that is 30 µm thick wires from the leadframe to the pads on the die. The advantage of BGA is rather that it allows tighter controls over the individual connections with the benefit of a more homogeneous connectivity.

The word that there was no incentive of moving towards BGA technology must have caused some chagrin at Actram, venerable refurbishing house for defective and Micron ICs and outfitter of brands as noble as KingMax, since the rest of the industry did not jump on the same bandwagon. Nevertheless, Tonicom (Actram's house brand) and KingMax continued to manufacture BGA-based DIMMs, the main benefit of which was the ultra low profile and the endorsement by several chipset manufacturers including SIS (645 chipset) and a follow-up by Intel (i875 - Canterwood chipset).

Meanwhile, some political maneuvering of new standards happened at Mother's, a.k.a. JEDEC. The term DDR400 had already been used by Micron for the entry-level speed grade of DDR-II. However, the political climate at Mother's did change over the last 18 months with Intel returning to the scene and actively barging in on some breakfast talks going on between a selected few of the DRAMurai and also incorporating top-secret but in retrospect home-style ADT technology into further DDR DRAM developments. All of a sudden, PC3200 which was handled under the counter only in overclocker's circles not only became a reality but also stole the name DDR400 from Idaho. It took a bit longer, thus, to finalize the standards because of all the different procedural issues.

The result is that there are DDR400 specs out there and they offer both BGA and TSOP packaging, otherwise, nothing has really changed too dramatically since the days of PC1600, who would have thought. At present, DDR400 even appears only as yet another stepping stone towards DDR533 before the transition to DDR-II will occur; that is, if it ever occurs at all. Chances are that DDR-II will share the fate of DDR-1.5 and will be skipped altogether in favor of the next major wave of system memory technology based on DDR-III.

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