Smart memory hubs being proposed

Both AMD and Intel are proposing a separate but similar new approach to
memory interconnection design for the future. They are dubbing it smart
memory hubs right now, but the details are a little sketchy. It involves
putting some sort of intelligence right into the memory modules.

http://www.eet.com/semi/news/OEG20030508S0023

The initial efforts are aimed at increasing memory density in servers. I'm
not sure how exactly these hubs are supposed to be "smart". I also fail to
see how adding another layer of circuitry in between the memory controller
and memory itself would speed up memory accesses, since it adds another hop
into the equation. However, perhaps these are the successors to the current
SPD ROM that is implanted on every DIMM to describe its architecture to the
memory controller on initialization? Perhaps these hubs send additional
information that SPDs can't send by themselves?

Yousuf Khan