Towards DDR3 Release: Intel Introduces new Chipsets

While Intel introduced yesterday its first DDR3-compatible chipset, memory modules manufacturers start releasing and validating their first dedicated products. One could be surprise to see such quick transition from DDR2 to DDR3 while, DDR was used for such a long time in our computers. The reason might be linked to Vista. Prior the release of the last version of Microsoft OS, analysts, websites as well as MS CEO were warning user concerning hardware specifications to run Vista, especially concerning the large amount of RAM required. As a consequence, RAM manufacturers prepared a large amount of DDR2 modules to get prepared for vista launch. However, adoption of Vista is not as fast as originally though, and OEM had stocks of modules. Couple of month later, the DDR2 memory has never been so cheap on the market, and RAM manufacturers wants to move on to the new format DDR3 in order to increase their margins and financial return on a new product (new, so rare, and so expensive).
Let's look at the DDR3 specifications. It is supposed to double the bandwidth to further increase data transfer speed and communication. However this is only a theoretical value, and similarly to the situation when moving from DDR to DDR2, the real gain is rather small. As for the first DDR2, performance level of the current DDR3 chips is strongly impacted by their high latency. If we take the evolution of the DDR2 as a reference, one will have to wait for at least half a year before seeing competitive DDR3 chips with more aggressive and lower latency, speed is nothing without responsiveness. Nevertheless computer companies should quickly adopt the DDR3 SODIMM modules as it is less power consuming than its brother the current DDR2 SODIMM. However, Apple should not adopt it before Penryn is released, so not before beginning of 2008.
Another Apple-branded hardware model could quickly move to DDR3: the Mac Pro. Indeed, it uses FB-DIMM memory modules featuring each a controller to optimize memory chips management, but leading to a high latency. This well-known weakness could be partially solved by FB-DIMM DDR3, as such modules should be directly compatible with Mac Pro. Indeed, the controller does not exchange data with memory chips, so it should not be a compatibility issue.
If the first hardware models powered by DDR3 should arrive by the end of the year, one would probably have to wait for one year before having competitive DDR3 able to equal or surpass current performance levels of the last DDR2 modules.