AMD and VIA have been very clear on what type of memory they will be using. DDR SDRAM is the future of memory for AMD and VIA platforms, not RDRAM. Around the COMPUTEX show floor, several motherboard and chipset makers showed their support by posting banners with the DDR266 logo. VIA held a seminar for OEMs and board makers touting the virtues of DDR with guest speakers from Samsung (the DDR originators), AMD, AMI2, Infineon, S3, Hyundai, Transmeta, Micron, and of course, VIA.

VIA should have their first Athlon DDR266 chipset finished or near finished by the end of 2000. Board makers had various opinions on whether or not VIA would be on time with DDR, but nobody we spoke with seemed to expect VIA or AMD Athlon DDR266 boards to actually hit the market before 2001. Believe it or not, the best hope for a shipping Athlon DDR266 chipset within the year 2000 comes from the homely ALi. If ALi can ship a chipset before VIA, ALi will be in a very strong position, much unlike their current bottom-of-the-market position. We did see several boards floating around behind the scenes with ALi chipsets, so it looks like the motherboard maker support will be there if ALi can ship first and they can get their production up. These are all very large "ifs."

But...we thought we had to mention one tiny little thing. It looks like VIA will be producing their first P6 DDR chipset well before their K7 DDR chipset... possibly months before. At COMPUTEX, AMD and VIA looked like the greatest buddies in the world, holding conferences together, announcing the Athlon Thunderbird together and posturing for the press, and indeed the two companies are very close. But VIA knows where the money is. AMD isn't the first kid on the playground to get a black eye from Intel.