JUST when it looked like the Rambus waiting game was over, Intel took a joker out of the pack. Intel's Camino 820 chipset has been delayed once more, this time due to problems arising from apparent errors in the core logic.

Intel had originally slated the Camino for release in the early first half of this year. But by the end of September, the chipset, expected to enable the world's first Rambus DRAM-based PCs, was delayed once again. The debut of Rambus PCs during this year is now in question, and OEMs have scrapped plans to introduce Rambus-based PCs until the problem can be fixed.

"It's pretty clear now that the transition to PC 100 SDRAM worked a lot better than this is working out." Peter Glaskowsky, senior analyst at MicroDesign Resources

Peter Glaskowsky, senior analyst at MicroDesign Resources, says, "(Intel) wanted to have systems come out on the day it announced the chip and now, it'll be three months later."

Glaskowsky said he expects the delay to be from one to three months, in part depending on how PC OEMs respond to the latest bad news. The length of the hitch in the supply chain also depends on how long it takes Intel to fix the problems in the Camino.

The defects were discovered at a relatively late stage, during tests of PCs using samples of the Intel Camino chipset. Apparently, the main problem in the Camino limits it to supporting
a maximum of two Rambus DRAM memory module slots on a PC motherboard.

"This is the kind of thing that the certification problem is designed to preclude, and if this has happened, they obviously have a problem with that certification problem," says Steve Cullen, senior analyst at Cahners In-Stat Group. Cullen believes the evidence of the problem points to Camino and could mean a three-month delay if the architecture is flawed.

"Hard to say what went wrong, whether it was with the electrical design of Rambus itself, a problem with the 820 or a problem with the motherboard makers," Glaskowsky says. "It's pretty clear now that the transition to PC 100 SDRAM worked a lot better than this is working out."

Intel declined to comment.

Rambus's Subodh Toprani, vice president of business marketing, points out that in other non-PC applications, Rambus DRAM has performed perfectly. "The problem is not with the direct Rambus DRAM [in PCs]. The problem is elsewhere," says Toprani. "You will need to ask Intel how this will affect the Rambus rollout."

OEM giant Dell Computer will not be shipping any PCs with the Camino chipset in the near future. Somewhat ironically, Dell was saying at the Intel Developer's Forum in September that it would have Camino chipsets in 50% of its systems by September next year.

"Our engineering group has identified problems using the Camino in our systems and our plans are on hold indefinitely," says a Dell spokesman.

Another major PC OEM, Micron Electronics, will not be using the Camino chipset and plans to use Via Technologies' Apollo PC 133 chipset for the time being.

At sister company Micron Semiconductor, Jeff Mailloux, product marketing manager, says his company has yet to take Rambus DRAM into production, so the decision to push back Camino will not affect Micron significantly.

"If I was a DRAM supplier that had several million Rambus parts on the market, I would be extremely upset," Mailloux said. Mailloux may have been referring to Samsung Semiconductor, which has stopped making Direct Rambus chips, and Hyundai Electronics. Both Korean companies are Micron competitors which were aggressively ramping up Rambus.

Peter Brown, Arik Hesseldahl and Chad Fasca

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