The general manager of Intel Europe has conceded that Rambus memory is still too expensive, despite widely announced price drops.

However, Robert L Eckelmann, who heads the chip company in this continent, speaking to a small coterie of Euro-hacks last week, hoped that the prices will fall even further.

Eckelmann said: "They've come down quite a bit from very high levels. They obviously need to come down more. They've come down 50 per cent in the last year." He added: "It won't be multiple years," for Rambus prices to fall further.

Other architectures, including the Intel Willamette processor, would help the decline in the price of Rambus, he claimed.

Eckelmann also contrasted the Intel Celeron platform with AMD's Duron microprocessor, responding to a question about how Intel will compete against the product.

He said: "We've just got to execute and move our new designs up and out. We've got to ensure a smooth transition to .13 micron architecture next year and getting out the most advanced products." ®

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