Intel Developer Forum Spring 2002 - Day 2

People often complain about having to install RIMMs in pairs on i850 boards. The reason behind this is that the i850 implements two 16-bit RDRAM channels to achieve its 3.2GB/s of peak theoretical memory bandwidth. Working together with module manufacturers and ASUS, Rambus presented an i850 board design that merged these dual 16-bit channels into a 32-bit wide RDRAM slot that could be populated by a 32-bit RIMM.

32-bit wide RDRAM modules

This would prevent the need of buying two RIMMs at a time but it would require that you use currently unavailable 32-bit RIMMs, however it is an interesting proposition for the future if more manufacturers start implementing it.

The board layout is relatively simple, a single 16-bit RDRAM channel is routed to one side of the RIMM slots while another channel is routed to the opposite side of the slots. The board used in this picture is the ASUS P4T-1066 which may be mass produced.