Memory Guru and owner/founder of Corsair Andy Paul on the PC Industry

The PC industry has many cool companies, lots of innovations and a ton of great people! One such company is Corsair, which I have worked with for many years. At their helm a very interesting, some say eccentric and down to earth personality – the one, the only, Andy Paul.

Andy Paul - CEO Corsair

Having known Andy for years, I thought it appropriate to ask him the hard memory questions that most enthusiasts never get the opportunity to ask.  Andy freely shared his wisdom, opinions, thoughts, intuitions and even a few wild predictions.

5 random Andy Paul facts:

1.   When I started my career, Intel was a leader in the memory world, microprocessors were 4 bit and the volume applications were washing machines

2.  I am from England; I have two English cars and two English dogs

3. I have a Degree in Physics from City University in London

4.  My wife, Lisa, is American and is a writer and a blogger

5.  I own a small vineyard and have been making wine for a few years

Andy in his Vineyard

Ian – Andy, first thanks for taking the time to do this for us and for the community, don’t worry I will be gentle.  Let’s kick this off by telling us the story of Corsair? How did it begin and where are you guys now?

Andy – Well Ian, this is probably before your time, but back in the early nineties, CPUs did not have onboard L2 Cache. So we started Corsair as a specialist supplier of L2 Cache modules to large OEMs. That was a great business for a while – until cache got moved onto the processor. Fortunately for us, at the same time, DRAM was transitioning from EDO to SDRAM, and we decided to jump into the DRAM market. We were one of the few suppliers in existence that understood that SDRAM required high speed circuit design and carefully controlled BOMs in order to perform well. We quickly developed a reputation for performance and stability, and we decided to build a company based on that reputation. Now Corsair is one of the most recognized brands out there for computer components, particularly among those who love performance hardware. We now sell not only memory, but power supplies and flash drives as well.

Ian – Corsair was born from humble beginnings; and speaking of memory, let’s dive into some questions from the community that I queried via Twitter and game.amd.com forums.  How do you think the transition from DDR2 to DDR3 memory is going?

Andy – It’s going quite well; this has been an easy transition for the customer. DDR3 has entered the market with no real compatibility problems or performance glitches. And, the cost of DDR3 has continued to trend downwards as expected. 4GB or even 6GB of DDR3 is now easily within the component budget for a typical system build. And we are hitting speeds of 2000 MHZ.

Recently the core i7 CPU has mainly been driving the volume of DDR3 in the enthusiast market but we expect the socket AM3 AMD Phenom™ II CPU with DDR3 to help the transition

Ian – Well, cost is always a factor in the PC industry. You mentioned that DDR3 cost is trending downward, which is great, what are the benefits and why should a gamer make the investment?

Andy – Well, as I mentioned before, cost on DDR3 really is not an issue so much any more. In fact, you can buy 6GB of premium, overclocked Corsair memory for less than $100. It’s the bargain of the century! For high performance, for ultimate bandwidth, and for compatibility with the future, you’ve got to go with DDR3.

However, DDR2 still meets the needs of most user applications.  At the moment the purchase choice isn’t really made at the RAM purchase level but at the system level.  If it’s a 65nm AMD Phenom processor or Core 2 Duo then it’s going to be configured with DDR2 motherboards and memory.  If a user goes with Core i7 or a new AMD Phenom II processor with DDR3, then he would pick a DDR3 motherboard and DDR3 memory.  The point is when you add up the cost of a high performance DDR3 system compared to a volume DDR2 solution, only a small premium will be from the memory.  So that’s not what drives the decision, it’s more about the overall system features.

Ian – I understand the bandwidth benefit but what about latency? Gamers demand lower latency and DDR2 delivers that. When will DDR3 catch up and when will it surpass DDR2 in terms of latency?

Andy – DDR3 has already passed DDR2 in terms of latency. Remember, latency is notated in clock cycles, but actually represents elapsed time. So, 1600MHz CAS-8 is actually LOWER latency (and thus, faster) than 800MHz CAS-5. Corsair’s fastest available part is 2000MHz CAS-7, which means that the latency is 3.5 nanoseconds. This is the same latency as 800MHz CAS-2.8 which of course does not exist! So, we have already seen this crossover.

Ian – As the trend towards more memory increases (I have 8G in my home system), is DDR3 better suited for denser memory? i.e. 2G or 4G memory sticks.  How do you see the memory piece of the PC puzzle working out?

Andy – DDR3 is not intrinsically higher density than DDR2. However, DDR3 is better suited for denser memory in that it is now the focus of development technology for memory. So, as fabs come up with new process geometries and new device densities, the development focus will be on DDR3, and DDR3 will be the first technology to market.

From a density standpoint, we see the sweet spot for memory being at least 6GB for three channel configurations, and at least 4GB for dual channel configurations. By the end of the year, I think many or most dual channel builds will transition to 8GB. Memory cost will continue to trend downwards, Windows 7 will be out there and applications programmers will produce applications and games that are designed to take advantage of 64-bit memory addressing.  Even now many of our customers are populating machines with 12G.

Ian -  Are there any memory trends on the horizon you think would have a cool geek factor?

Andy – Well, Corsair definitely has lots of products here and on the horizon which have serious geek appeal. And since we are the leaders here and others tend to copy what we do, I suppose the trends will follow!  Just one example of a cool enthusiast product we offer is a cooling system for memory which actually takes the memory BELOW ambient temperature. The technology is TEC based, but employs humidity and temperature sensors to keep the modules just ABOVE the dew point to avoid condensation.  Also, of course, our Dominator GT modules with racing red heat sinks and the world’s fastest performance are also very appealing to “geeks!”

Ian -  With PC ASP’s driving down to historical lows and in an extremely challenging economy, where do you see the PC industry going?

Andy – Well, Ian, being at AMD I suspect you have a better view of that than I do. My standpoint is heavily tilted towards the home system builder community. We still see a lot of activity but, combined as you might expect with some degree of fluctuation based on the economic uncertainty, as you might expect.  I would think that there will be a lot of fallout this year, especially with companies that lack premium features in their products, or companies without strong brands.

For component areas with a lot of suppliers, like memory, graphics cards, etc., I would expect to see the most casualties.  But the companies that continue to innovate and offer their customers features with good value will continue to do well.  What I do see is that with lower prices, most families now have multiple PCs; this doesn’t have to be a major family purchase anymore.  In fact the last cell phone I bought cost me more than the general purpose PC I just built, and I just put a small format 12V PC in my boat.  So I think there are plenty of opportunities for the market to continue to expand.

Of course it’s high graphics content games that really drive the performance market, and until those achieve TV level reality, I don’t think the market will slow down in terms of technological advancement.

PC Nav Station on Andy

PC under the berth

Ian – Make a wild prediction for enthusiasts and gamers?

Andy – I would expect that in 3 years from now, Corsair will be as well known for the cases and power supplies we make as for high performance memory.  Actually that’s not that wild is it? How about Intel merging with Nvidia?

Ian – Finally, is the story true about the Corsair business plan being figured out on a boat?

Andy – Yes, that is true. I used to spend almost every weekend sailing and racing boats. When a few of us got talking about starting a new company it seemed a good place to have the discussion, over a few beers I think.

That’s how the pirate name, Corsair, came into being.

Ian – Andy, thank you for your time; how can gamers and enthusiasts get more info on Corsair?

Andy – Well, at www.corsair.com, of course… as well on enthusiast forums, review sites, and blogs (like this one!), and at most computer component retailers worldwide…

Cheers!

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Andy Paul is CEO and President of Corsair Memory. His opinions are his own and may not represent those of AMD.

Ian McNaughton is senior manager of advanced marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.