A company named Kentron was showing off a technology of theirs called Quad Band Memory (QBM). QBM is a variant of DDR memory that sends four bits of data per clock, essentially doubling DDR memory bandwidth. The technology does take some changes to the DRAM, which to us, more or less rules it out as a mainstream PC technology for at least the next several years. Instead, we see the technology going into a few high-bandwidth markets where we see QBM competing with RDRAM. Who knows, we might see QBM on a video card.

IBM presented their Memory eXtension Technology (MXT). MXT is a hardware memory compression technology that, using methods similar to PKZIP, compresses data in memory. By compressing data, a system can reach the same level of performance with less memory and less money. IBM is aiming the technology at systems with large amounts of memory where a hardware solution would be cost effective. We can only wonder whether an intelligent software memory compression scheme could cost less and get nearly the same, if not more, performance.

The ACR SIG made a strong showing, with a wide variety of ACR upgrades on display. While you cannot yet buy a motherboard with ACR, judging from the backing ACR is receiving, at the very least, the new slot will take a bite out of CNR. Competition is usually good, but having the two competing standards splitting up any economies of scale may stop both ACR and CNR prices from dropping.

This Platform Conference was the first to have a motherboard pavilion, with various motherboard vendors showing their newest wares. ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, Tyan, and others were in attendance. Most were showing DDR systems.