Intel looks to fund Toshiba RDRAM production

Intel is negotiating to make an investment in Toshiba to secure its supply of Direct Rambus DRAMs.

Details of the offer have not been disclosed. Intel has already invested $600 million in Micron Technology and Samsung Electronics to fund their development of Direct Rambus devices.

Toshiba plans to produce 72-megabit Rambus DRAMs in small quantities at its Yokkaichi plant in Japan during the first half of 1999. Full production of 128-Mb and 144-Mb RDRAMs is slated to begin by mid-1999.

Intel is striving to stabilize its supplier base before the second quarter, when the CPU maker plans to roll out its Camino chip set, which will support Direct Rambus DRAMs. Direct Rambus boosts a system's memory bandwidth from the current 100MHz to 600MHz or 800MHz.

The full story appears online at http://techweb.com .