With Intel officially launching its DDR3-supporting Bearlake chipsets at Computex Taipei 2007, industry players are lauding a next-generation SDRAM that promises upgrades in speed, higher bandwidth and lower power consumption than the current DDR2 platform. However, with DDR3 modules having a price premium as high as ten times that of DDR2 modules of the same density, most memory players agree that the market transition to DDR3 will not come until 2009.

According to Steve Chang, vice president at memory module maker Transcend Information, if you look at the same configuration (64Mbitx8) DDR3-1066 and DDR2-667, the market price for a DDR3 chip is still as high as US$10 while the DDR2 chip price is only US$1.80 (based on market pricing in late May). This price gap of nearly five times means it will take considerable time for DDR3 to penetrate the market, Chang said.

Chang pointed out that it took more than a year for the market to transition from DDR to DDR2 and he estimates that the transition to DDR3 should take a similar length of time. Once more DDR3 modules start becoming available in the market in the second half of 2007, it will take at least one year for the platform to rise as the mainstream, he added.

Chang estimates that if the price of DDR3 narrows down to around twice that of DDR2 , DDR3 modules will only account for about 5% of Transcend's shipments. If the gap narrows down to within 20% by the end of 2008, he projects DDR3 modules will account for about 30% of Transcends shipments. However, Chang again stressed that price is a critical factor for determining how quickly the market adopts DDR3.