RDRAM Specs

• RDRAM stands for "Rambus Dynamic Random Access Memory," and was developed by the Rambus corporation. It has a significantly smaller market share than SDRAM, but has a niche market in the gaming console industry with Nintendo 64, Sony Playstation 2 and Sony Playstation 3. RDRAM has a number of unique specifications that serves to distinguish it from other types of RAM.

Packet-based Command Protocol

• Packet-based Command Protocols are used for data transfer between the host workstation and a hardware accelerator. Data is loaded and unloaded from the RDRAM as the workstation and accelerator communicate in response to actions initiated by the user.

Command Pipelining

• Command Pipelining entails sending more than one command at one time -- a batch -- from the memory to other hardware components in a computing system. The benefit of command piplelining is that the system doesn't need to wait for one command at a time to process, as multiple commands are processed simultaneously.

Low-Voltage Differential Signaling

• Low-Voltage Differential Signaling, or LVD, uses two wires for each signal, which allows for faster data transfer. However, unlike High-Voltage Differential Signaling, the power expended by LVD is significantly lower, which reduces both cost and power requirements for devices that use RDRAM.