The VP of Compaq US' x86 enterprise server division said today that there were no circumstances he could contemplate where his company would ever use Rambus memory in its range of servers. Paul Santeler said that Compaq "has no plans to use Rambus in any of its servers, and that it would use DDR and synchronous memory for the foreseeable future. That came after Santeler's presentation on eight way servers where he explained Compaq's plans to proliferate its own chipset -- co-developed with Intel -- for servers using Willamette and Foster servers. Santeler said: "The 8500 is a tough act to follow-- we're going to extense (sic) it out with microprocessor refreshes. In Q1, 2001, we'll refresh it with Foster, which has a 400MHz quad pump front side bus. We'll have five memory controllers." He claimed that the performance of the Willamette/Foster processor will deliver double the performance of its current eight way offering, which uses the Intel Xeon processor. "Compaq will drive the price down, as it did with our 8500," said Santeler. When Compaq delivers the Foster eight way in Q1 2000, it will cost roughly the same as the current Proliant 8500, he said. Santeler also rubbished IDC's projections that only 90 eight way servers would ship in 1999, and said that it had already seeded 120 eight way servers before the eight way Profusion platform was introduced in last August. He repeated Enrico Pesatori's figure that Compaq had shipped 3,500 eight way Proliants since August, and although he absolutely refused to say how many Q will ship this year, he displayed a hand gesture that suggested a 45 to 50 per cent progression over last year's figures. The Sabre board, which Intel ships to Compaq competitors, did not cut it, said Santeler. "Compaq was very involved in making this market. When Sabre came out, it was broken and we kicked butt because we were ready with our solution." Forty one per cent of Compaq's eight way servers used six or more Xeon processors, he said. Part of the reason for Q's success in the market, said Santeler, was that it had chip level access to Corollary eight way server technology back in 1996, and when that company was taken over by Intel, the chip level relationship continued. ®