Subject: open source and open drain

From: [email-masked] (Mark Johnson)
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 1995 13:32:46 -0800

[email-masked] (C. Kumar) writes:

   >I have a general question for you regarding open drain or
   >any open devices.  Under what circumstances you use such
   >devices and what are their advantages?

Not an explanation, but a datapoint:
    There's a way of connecting DRAMs together called "RAMBUS"
    that runs at 500 megabytes per second (500MHz , 8 wires)
    I/O bandwidth in garden variety, DRAM-grade CMOS.  They're
    showing off working systems at trade shows and so forth.
    *Part* of their "secret sauce" is the fact that they use
    open-drain pad drivers.  More can be learned by looking
    at the most recent 2 years' digests of the International
    Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).  Reading through
    the material, one gets the impression they give more or
    less equal emphasis to (1) driving the bus; (2) receiving
    the bus; (3) distributing and regenerating the clock.

--mj