Unswayed by the decision by Toshiba and Hitachi last week to license Rambus patents for double data rate (DDR) and SDRAM, plucky chipset firm Via has waded in by saying it offers its unequivocal support for these memory types as the industry standard.

In a press statement just released from Taipei, the firm took the somewhat unusual step of saying that DDR will offer "realistic pricing" and and is the open standard for "all segments of the PC market".

The firm said: "As the highest bandwidth, lowest latency solution that will be available this year, DDR is expected to have a rapid ramp up to volume production at reasonable prices and to be rapidly adapted because of its inherent performance advantages. VIA is sampling chips now and looking
to reach full production with major design wins by the end of Q4 2000."

Indeed, DDR chipsets which were notably missing from the recent Computex trade show earlier this month, are expected to be displayed at a conference in San Jose next week which we will attend.

Platform 2000 is also likely to be a ferment of debate around the recent licensing coups for Ramboost, according to Bert McComas, a chip analyst and one of the organisers of the show.

Of course, Via has a vested interest (geddit?) in ensuring that Rambus doesn't extract a licence fee for all those DDR t-shirts it was touting at Computex.

Meanwhile, our pals at Insane Hardware have just posted Via's chipset roadmap up until the end of the year. ®