Crucial, a division of Micron Technology, is well known as the leader in computer memory upgrades, offering a large selection of high quality items at reasonable prices. Anyone that has dealt with Crucial knows that they have earned their reputation with trustworthy products backed by a 30-day money back guarantee, lifetime limited warranty, and excellent customer service.
As I said, those are the things we already knew about Crucial. I had a few other questions that Crucial was kind enough to answer for me, covering topics such as: their products, their views on overclocking, performance ddr, and the future of system memory. The blurred line between Crucial and Micron is also clarified, as my own misunderstandings are addressed, and information available on the Crucial website is explained in greater detail...
Jason Kohrs, BigBruin: Please provide a little background information (name, location, position with Crucial, time at this position, previous experience that may be of interest, etc).
Andy Heidelberg, Crucial: My name is Andy Heidelberg and I’m one of the engineers at Crucial. I’ve been with Micron for a little over eight years and with Crucial for the last four years. I’m involved in applications support and helping customers that need non-standard memory solutions for their products.
Jason Kohrs, BigBruin: DDR memory is definitely the big thing in system memory at this time; does Crucial envision this changing any time soon?
Andy Heidelberg, Crucial: DDR memory will be the mainstream memory through this year, for sure. Beyond that, who knows? It’s important to keep in mind, though, that just because we have some pretty advanced technology on the market now, Crucial still has a good deal of customers buying SIMMs. There’s a large group of people out there still running older systems that don’t yet utilize DDR memory. The bottom line for Crucial is that we’re trying to help people get more out of their existing system so more memory is probably the easiest way to do that, regardless if it’s SDR, DDR, or whatever.
Jason Kohrs, BigBruin: How far can DDR go? What speed ratings might we see (not necessarily from Crucial)?
Andy Heidelberg, Crucial: PC3200 will be the fastest DDR-I speed supported by JEDEC. The architecture really isn’t designed to run any faster than that. Faster speed memory (533MHz, 800MHz) will come about as DDR-II becomes the next mainstream memory architecture.
Jason Kohrs, BigBruin: Other memory manufacturers / memory assemblers offer DDR in speeds far exceeding the JEDEC standards (such as PC3700, DDR 466), with more aggressive timings and lower latencies. How does Crucial view this “performance” DDR market?
Andy Heidelberg, Crucial: Crucial memory is designed to JEDEC standards to meet the needs of the majority of the market--the mainstream computer user. Though our high-quality memory is certainly used by the “performance” market, we do not support overclocking. Running Crucial memory outside of the specification will void the Crucial warranty.
Jason Kohrs, BigBruin: Does Crucial consider this “performance” DDR market to be competition, or more like serving a special niche in the industry?
Andy Heidelberg, Crucial: See above.
Jason Kohrs, BigBruin: Crucial’s fastest DDR modules at this time are PC3200 (DDR 400). Are there any plans for Crucial to enter the performance DDR market and offer something faster than the standard speeds?
Andy Heidelberg, Crucial: No. Crucial will not be offering memory outside of JEDEC specifications.
Jason Kohrs, BigBruin: Many other DDR brands ship their modules with copper or aluminum heat spreaders pre-installed, while Crucial does not. Many people in the tech sector are not convinced of the necessity of the heat spreader. What is Crucial’s position?
Andy Heidelberg, Crucial: Crucial does not support overclocking. Our memory is guaranteed to run at the speeds it’s designated for, so we don’t have to be concerned with heat spreaders or the like.
Jason Kohrs, BigBruin: What will be the next big thing in system memory?
Andy Heidelberg, Crucial: I wish I had a crystal ball--then I could tell you. The truth is, nobody knows for sure. I can remember when we thought 64MB was all you'd ever need. Now the idea of having 1GB of memory in a home PC is becoming more and more commonplace. No matter what’s on the horizon, Crucial will continue supporting the memory solutions that our customers need.
DDR-II will likely be the next generation of mainstream (desktop, laptop, and so on) memory solutions. DDR-II will offer several improvements to DDR-I, especially in how the DRAM works "behind the scenes." There are two noticeable improvements the average end user will see as we adopt this new technology.
1. Different form factors (DDR-I and DDR-II modules will not be interchangeable.)
2. DDR-II will be faster (higher bandwidth). DDR-II modules will most likely initially have speeds of 533MHz (PC4200) when they debut.
Chipset and memory design and validation are currently underway with all major system, chipset, and memory manufacturers. Most likely these products won't be commercially available for the average user for another year or so.
Another change that’s coming is something called G-DDR3. This is a memory architecture designed specifically for point-to-point applications (like a video card), so you won’t see it on modules. This is the fastest memory available in the world today and Micron was the first to provide working parts to customers. Can you say 6.4GB/s bandwidth? G-DDR3 can! Think your video card is fast now? Just wait!
Jason Kohrs, BigBruin: What is the next big thing that we can expect to see from Crucial?
Andy Heidelberg, Crucial: We’re constantly evaluating new products and not just RAM. We also offer a Crucial® Radeon™ video card line, flash memory cards and readers, and just recently we began offering the Crucial® Gizmo!™ USB flash drive.
Jason Kohrs, BigBruin: What types of things is Crucial spending its research and development money on today?
Andy Heidelberg, Crucial: This is a question that pertains to Micron. You can check out Micron’s latest corporate profile at:
Jason Kohrs, BigBruin: According to the Crucial website, there are 19,000 people, including 2,000 engineers, employed by Crucial worldwide. Can you give a rough breakdown of how the resources are allocated… sales, engineering, r&d, customer service, etc?
Andy Heidelberg, Crucial: Those statistics refer to our parent company, Micron. The corporate profile link above has the current figures.
As for Crucial Technology, we’re headquartered in Meridian, Idaho. We have offices in both Scotland and Singapore. Crucial employs about 380 people worldwide. Crucial has sales divisions specifically for consumer, business, the government and education sector, and resellers.
