A report on a Taiwanese wire that double data rate (DDR) memory will ship to the tune of seven million chipsets in the second half of this year has, once more, forced us to return to the hoary (or is it hairy) old subject of how well chipset based on this type of memory will do against Rambus memory. The report, which you can find at Ace's Hardware, is a lot of DDR memory and cannot be totally accounted for by sales of workstation and high-end servers. Intel, and a number of its main PC customers, have committed to using DDR in a wide range of up-and-coming products. Intel, meanwhile, is still promoting Rambus as the platform of choice for the high end desktop, and in particular says that it will be used with its up-and-coming Willamette processor, when that dawns. Willamette's big brother, Foster, to be used in workstations and servers, will use DDR. AMD will use DDR memory with its Athlon products. Two weeks back, Kingston, a major supplier of modules, said that the prices of mobile parts had dropped by around 35 per cent. That's most of the soap to date. Richard Gordon, senior analyst at Dataquest Europe, thinks, however, that there is little doubt that Rambus will despite all the argy-bargy, win the memory day. He told The Register today: "DDR is mainly going into the high end of the market." As far as the desktop is concerned, however, he has stronger views. "DDR in the mainstream PC market is basically a non-starter," he said. "Intel and Rambus have got it right here. Intel and Rambus have got the mainstream market sewn up." Although Gordon conceded that AMD is making strides in the desktop place, he said that, compared to Intel, it owned still quite a small piece of the PC market. Let the debate re-commence. ®