Increasing the amount of memory in PCs in the future will depend on the ability of memory manufacturers to reduce the cost of memory chips. Generally, memory chips get cheaper by shrinking the size of the memory cells, the circuits on the chips that hold data. That's no longer easy. "It's getting harder to make DRAM cells smaller when the crossover (to putting 4GB of memories in PCs) is not 100 percent certain," Rattner said. "It is a ways off." A slowdown in turn would likely put a ceiling on the amount of memory that goes into mainstream machines. Typically, PC makers won't spend more than 8 percent of their costs on memory, according to memory and computer executives. Most desktops today come with around 256MB or 512MB of memory. A select few come with 1GB. Analysts' predictions generally follow Rattner's projection. By 2005, mainstream systems at the time will contain only 1GB of memory, according to Gartner, while most high-end systems will contain only 2.5GB. "The software just isn't there," added Sherry Garber, an analyst at Semico Research, who added that mainstream systems may not come with 1GB until 2007. AMD executives disagree, saying that consumers and developers will want the additional memory once a chip exists that will make it easy to buy. High-end consumers may even need the added memory in some circumstances because of the way applications will develop by 2004, the company has asserted. History also shows that memory prices can go down far faster than predictions. Game developers have said that 4GB computers could become popular rapidly, especially with online gaming. Nonetheless, AMD executives acknowledge that the price is a bit high right now. 4GB costs about $1,000, or more than most computers. Although dismissive of the need to shift, Intel is examining ways in which some of the advantages of 64-bit computing could come to the desktop. One avenue of exploration could involve improving the way Itanium chips run 32-bit software, Wirt said. Currently, Itanium chips do not run regular Windows code well. If this function could be improved, however, Intel hypothetically could begin to make energy-efficient versions of Itanium for desktops, Wirt said. Another technique for expanding the memory capacity of current 32-bit chips is through physical memory addressing, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst of Mercury Research. This involves altering the chipset so that 32-bit chips could handle longer memory addresses. Intel has in fact already done preliminary work that would let its PC chips handle 40-bit addressing, which would let PCs hold more than 512GB of memory, according to papers published by the company. "This is trivial to implement. It would probably take an engineer a week," McCarron said. Nonetheless, "they would have to get Microsoft and the application guys to cooperate." Another technique would be simply putting two processors into high-end machines. "There are a number of actions that don't necessarily require them to come out with a 64-bit chip," McCarron added. However, "if AMD gains traction, they will have to respond."
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