We managed to get a hold of Paul Watkins at Corsair, European Sales Director, and asked him questions about everything from its history to its view RAM-based harddrives.
Many of the questions are of course about Corsair’s main goal, the memory market, but we also managed to squeeze some other subjects into the interview.

Among our regular readers not many makes a frowny face when they hear about the company Corsair. The respected memory manufacturer has been active on the PC-market for about a decade and is still one of the leading actors on the memory market. It has continued to supply us with a wide range of memory modules but has lately been looking into other categories as well.
We decided to take a chat with Corsair to get some more info and not only on their products but also the company behind the products.

We managed to get a hold of Paul Watkins at Corsair, European Sales Director, and asked him questions about everything from its history to its view on RAM-based harddrives.
Many of the questions are of course about Corsair’s main goal, the memory market, but we also managed to squeeze some other subjects into the interview.


Before we move on with the interview we would like to point out that ut us presented exactly as we performed the interview.

[NordicHardware]: Hi Paul and thank you for giving us the opportunity to ask some questions about Corsair and your products. We wonder if you could start with giving us a simple presentation of Corsair and yourself? We have a few specifically interesting points in this regard.

[Paul Watkins]: So, about me…briefly, I have an engineering background…I enterered the DRAM market in 1992, when I joined Micron. Subsequently, I was European Marketing Manager in IBM ’s Microelectronics Division for some years, before joining with Corsair. I have been with Corsair since January 2001. I am Corsair’s Director of Sales for Europe. I have responsibility for Corsair’s European Sales and Marketing operations.

Paul Watkins (Under en dyksemester på Sardinierna)

· Company history?

[Paul Watkins]: Corsair was founded 11 years ago, to design and manufacture high speed cache memory modules for companies like Intel, Dell and Micron. (When Level 2 cache was on the a module, not on the CPU – Who remembers that ?) We’ve been working to stay at the forefront of high speed module design ever since then.

· Number of manufactured memory modules in Corsairs factory’s (monthly). For OEM and retail sales?

[Paul Watkins]: Since we are focussed so heavily on the enthusiast and gaming market, the bulk of what we make is for the retail market. On-line stores like Komplett and Datorbutiken make up a good share of our business in Scandinavia

· How are Corsair’s sales figures divided amongst your different products? ( DRAM memory, USB memory, water cooling and so forth)

[Paul Watkins]: Corsair has been in the DRAM industry for a long time. Memory modules still make up the biggest share of our market. We entered into watercooling last year, in order to get educated in the current and future needs of our customer base. Our current offering ( The ‘ COOL ’ www.corsairmemory.com/corsair/COOL_water.html  ) is our third water cooling product. We are trying to make top-class watercooling kit is available from a mainstream company (us), so enthusiasts can be sure of good service and good availability. We are trying to bring water out of the shadows.  I said ‘future’ needs, because surpisingly few people are actively using watercooling right now. We expect water to play a huge part in the enthusiast market in a few years. We want to evolve with the market, so that we can bring the same benefits to that market as we did to the memory market, when XMS overclocking memory launched, some years back – I mean reliability, performance, quality, service.

 

[NordicHardware]: Mostly when you talk about high performance memory modules the discussion is about what memory chips are the best. What memory chips does Corsair use in its product lines?

[Paul Watkins]: We use many several DRAM chips across our product range. For our fastest modules, we test every chip on the market, to find the fastest. We then ensure that it can be made in enough volume to satisfy our customers needs (there’s no point having the fastest module in the world, if real people can get hold of it). For example, our 3200XL modules (the ones with 2-2-2-5 timings) use the special die the Samsung produced for Corsair – their TCCD die. For other speed grades, we balance the needs for price, performance – making sure it always meets the guaranteed specification and then see what headroom we can find.  

And what are the differences between memory chips that make them perform so differently?

[Paul Watkins]: Most memory chips are designed and manufactured with the primary goal of making companies like Dell happy. This means that they should be cheap and meet the spec that Dell is using at the time. In general, the chip makers try to tune their production to turn out as many just-good-enough chips as possible. (The Dell-likes won’t pay more for a chip that goes faster than their spec). So most chips run just-fast-enough. Sometimes, however, a new die rev will have been designed with a different customer in mind; perhaps in telecoms, or perhaps Corsair, as was the case for Samsung’s TCCD. We can find any ‘hidden speed’ and harness it. Occasionally, a DRAM chip will be designed to be fast enough that it can be tweaked, at a later date, to meet future speed grades. So, even though the chip maker only tests it to, say, PC3200, we can test it again to find parts that will run faster.

 

[NordicHardware]: If  we look beyond the memory chips we have the PCB (Printed Circuit Board) or the module it self. How important is a high quality PCB for enthusiast memory that often is stressed to their limits?

[Paul Watkins]: It is very important for reliability and stability (as well as performance). The PCB is the foundation upon which the module reliability, compatibility and stability are based. A high quality PCB will contain sufficient power and ground planes to adequately perform at high speeds. It will have matched trace lengths ensuring reliable signal timings (the connection wires that run across the PCB have to be carefully measured and controlled, to avoid deterioration of the signal on the module). It will also have thick layers of gold on the pins, to ensure good connection and signal integrity in the socket (rather than having a thin layer of gold ‘sputtered’ on – a kind of electrical spraying technique). Corsair prides itself on the quality of it’s PCB design and manufacture – this is what our reputation for reliability is built on.

It’s also possible to sometimes get a PCB design that gives significant performance boosts, compared to the norm. There is one such case right now.


[NordicHardware]: Corsair has a life time warranty policy for their memory line-up. But exactly how does this warranty work. Is it the life of the consumer or is it the life of the memory module, does the warranty expire when the module goes out of production or is the consumer covered for their entire life?

[Paul Watkins]: It works like this; if one of our modules ceases to function properly, in the application it was designed for (e.g. in a PC), it will be replaced with the same module or, if that module is no longer made, with as close a match as possible. It’s very simple, there are no hidden catches.

 

[NordicHardware]: Corsair has always focused on the memory market that in many eyes is a pretty “boring” market without many unique products. With the launch of for example the Pro and now recently the Xpert series Corsair has created truly unique memory modules, by integrating diagnostic tools on the modules themselves.
Is this a way to give the memory market a greater consumer appeal or is it strictly because Corsair felt that the added features was needed amongst their users?

[Paul Watkins]: What’s boring is when your system crashed because your memory is faulty. How often is the memory the cause of a system hardware problem ? …most of the time. So, while magazines don’t shout much about memory, it is possibly the most important component in your PC, and the easiest to get wrong. There are so many people that make modules, there is a lot of possibility for vendors to cut corners, in order to be cheap (you’ll probably spend more money on memory than on amy other system component ). You don’t get that so much with CPUs (only Intel or AMD ), or graphics chips (nVidia or ATI ), or chipsets ( VIA , nVidia, AMD , Intel), or hard drives (Maxtor, seagate..) You get the point. You can somewhat rely on most components, because on the badge it carries. Memory is no different. You just have to check the badge (I recommend the one with blue sails).

As for the PRO and the Xpert, we are trying to achieve two things; we are making the memory more feature-rich (as the marketing guys say). For the enthusiast, these features can be very useful. You can’t depent upon your BIOS to tell you the bus frequency or the memory voltage. You can get some variable results. Likewise, the thermistor in your CPU won’t tell you the temperature of your RAM . The Xpert (and to a lesser extent, the PRO) measure these vital statistics (!) directly from the module. They are the real deal. Having software to help you do that makes it easier for enthusiasts to tinker under the hood. The second thing we are doing is to give the memory some ‘bling’. If you have a windowed case, you want to see some action – Don’t you ?

 

[NordicHardware]: Coming back to the Pro and Xpert series of memory the later has really expanded the diagnostic abilities of Corsairs modules that was first introduced in the Pro series. We’ll soon publish or own review of the Xpert series but for know we would like to know what Corsair had in mind when launching the Xpert series and what consumers it’s targeted to?

[Paul Watkins]: I have somewhat answered this one in question 4. But to recap; the Xpert is;
1. for performance tweakers who want to know the facts, not just get unreliable clues, and 2. for PC enthusiasts who want to give their rig a personal touch. Go take a look at the specs www.corsairmemory.com/corsair/xms_xpert.html

 

[NordicHardware]: The DDR 2 market expanded quite a lot last year even though only Intel has embraced the technology on the PC market. What does the future hold for DDR 2 during 2005 and does Corsair have any specific plans in this regard?

[Paul Watkins]: Oh yes ! DDR 2 is still more expensive than DDR and it will stay that way, probably for the rest of the year. However, there is plenty of headroom in DDR 2 performance – DDR 800 next. As new chipsets are developed to take advantage of it, Corsair will be there to give you  the memory to make it fly. We did this with our PC5400 (we had DDR 2 ready 7 months before chipsets were available to run it!) and we have other DDR 2 products in the pipeline.

 

[NordicHardware]: Before we leave memory subject we are also wondering what Corsair feels about DRAM drives. More exactly harddrives without mechanical parts that uses memory chips for storage. Have Corsair as a memory maker discussed the possibility to produce such products as and do you think there is a market for this kind of product in the near future? 

[Paul Watkins]: It’s technically feasible now, of course. However, with 512MB of memory costing SEK 800, it would cost SEK 200,000 for a 120GB DRAM -hard-drive. Compare this with SEK 720 for a 120GB IDE drive and something will have to change significantly before it becomes and option. The other problem is volatility. If you remove the power, DRAM forgets everything. So you’d need a battery backup, to ensure data stays put. If the battery goes flat, while you’re away on your holidays, you lose all your programmes, all your photos, all your music. Not good.

Flash is already taking some of this job, for portable hard drives. Excuse the advert, but Corsair has a 2GB USB drive. That’s already a lot of storage and it never forgets. ( but since I mentioned it.. www.corsairmemory.com/corsair/flash_memory.html )

 

[NordicHardware]: The last couple of months we have also reported about Corsairs new flash based memory products. The USB memory stick, Flash Voyager, for example is one of these new products. Why did Corsair decided to enter the flash memory market? And why did it take so long?

[Paul Watkins]: We entered the flash market because we believe that we can produce products that are either more interesting (features, look and feel – I mean the Voyager USB drive) or because we can bring a performance benefit. We are diping our toe in the water now. We plan to have new fast and interesting products as our experience develops.

[NordicHardware]: Thank you Paul for taking time to answer our and our readers questions!

[Paul Watkins]: My pleasure !


We hope you’ve found this interview interesting and found a lot of information on Corsair as a company and their views on the market. Personally we like that Corsair has started to move on to other markets other than just the memory market. Although the memory market is of course the place they will always keep closest to their heart.
There is hardly any reasons to change a winning conecpt, but Corsair seems to work very hard to expand and develop new ways to keep up with the almost exploding development on the PC-market.

Some of you might wonder why you’re question didn’t make it into the final interview and that is mainly because we had to shorten the interview due to lack of time. The result was ten questions with detailed answers from Paul Watkins, which we honestly prefer over 15-20 questions with less detailed answers.
You will get to see more of Corsair and their products here at NordicHardware in the future. Unfortunately all our attempts to squeeze any information on future products resulted in nothing, which really wasn’t a surprise but but we felt we had to try at least.

Keep an eye for new material on Corsair here at NordicHardware.

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