Items tagged with DRAM
Samsung's new Line-16 memory semiconductor fabrication facility is now fully operational, the chip maker announced at its Nano City Complex in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, where the fab is located. According to Samsung, Line-16 is the industry's largest memory fab in the world. Samsung wasted no time in putting its plant to use and has already started mass producing the industry's first 20nm-class DDR3 memory modules. "The global semiconductor industry is in a period of fierce cyclical volatility, so the opening of this new memory fab and the start of mass production of the world's first 20nm-class DRAM are important milestones to reinforce Samsung's industry leadership," said Kun-hee Lee, Chairman...
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Did you think Intel would squander its final day at IDF sitting on its thumbs and letting the momentum from previous announcements close out the event? Pshaw! Rather than do that, Intel brought up a number of topics today, including plans to take computing to the extreme, multi-core's many uses, and an interesting new DRAM concept called Hybrid Memory Cube. Let's start with the multi-core talk. Lest anyone thing single-core is long for this world, Intel came out and said what we already know, which is "the practice of building more than one processing engine into a single chip has become the accepted method to increase performance." It's also not as simple as that. As Intel continues to bring...
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Corsair just sent us word that its recently announced Special Edition Arctic White Vengeance Low Profile memory is now shipping and ready for purchase. This low profile kit operates at 1.35V and is aimed at ultra-quiet systems and other low-voltage applications that don't require obnoxiously loud cooling solutions. Each dual-channel 8GB DDR3-1600 kit contains "two rigorously-screened 4GB DDR3 DRAM modules," Corsair says, and the memory maker guarantees they'll run at 1600MHz with a tested latency of 9-9-9-24 or they'll give you a million dollars (wait, that can't be right, mostly because we made it up. It's much more likely they're swap your kit out for one that runs as advertised). "Vengeance...
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The tendency of DRAM to become cheaper over time is generally considered a good thing—at least, in the consumer market—but evidence suggests prices may have fallen a bit too much. Current manufacturing costs using 40nm technology is about US $1.50 while the selling price for a 2Gb part is currently $1.17 - $1.31. This is less a problem for the top-tier RAM manufacturers who are using 30nm tech, but there's no way for smaller players to quickly migrate to the updated process. Selling parts below the cost of manufacture is obviously unsustainable over the long term, a fact that has left the DRAM companies contemplating production cuts. Such cuts aren't made lightly; companies have typically...
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Analyst firm IHS reports that chip supplier inventories have risen for the seven consecutive month. The continued rise in inventories reflects a general belief that consumer demand for electronic products will soon increase, though economic indicators are somewhat sketchy on this point. "Increases in stockpiles during the first quarter reflect efforts by semiconductor suppliers to rebuild inventory for products that were in short supply during the capacity crunch of 2010,” said Sharon Stiefel, analyst for semiconductor intelligence at IHS. “Suppliers also are moving to strategically build for the higher demand expected later this year. In a fortuitous stroke of good timing, semiconductor...
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There goes Samsung, innovating on the memory front once again. The company has just started to mass produce 30-nanometer 32GB memory modules, which are said to be aimed specifically at the cloud computing and advanced server system market. Wanhoon Hong, executive vice president, memory sales & marketing, Samsung Electronics, had this to say about the announcement: "With this module, Samsung has secured the highest level of product and solution competitiveness in the DRAM market for PC, server and mobile applications. We also plan to ship more energy-efficient 4Gb DDR3 DRAM based on 20nm-class process technology in the second half of this year, which will significantly expand the rapidly growing...
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Today, HP announced a notable development in its efforts to design memristor technology. The company has managed to map the chemical changes and basic structures of its own prototypes. The startling implication is accurate—HP managed to build a memristor before it fully understood how its own design functioned. The memristor was theorized to exist by one Leon Chua in 1971, but remained a hypothetical fourth circuit element (capacitors, resistors, and inductors are the other three) for decades. HP Labs finally managed to build a functional memristor in 2008. Memristors are a 'Holy Grail' technology—they could change computing nearly as much as the invention of the transistor. The word...
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Micron, Samsung, Hynix, Infineon, NEC, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, Elpida and Nanya. Ten companies, some of which you have definitely heard of before, all of which are being hit with some very bad news this week from the European Union. The European Commission branch this week handed down their first settlement in an ongoing investigation into cartel-like activities between these parties, which purportedly helped to "fix prices" in order to keep DRAM prices artificially high. This isn't completely unusual. We have also seen big-name companies in the LCD world hit with similar fines, and the EU never takes kindly to things of this matter. Micron, it should be noted, is being spared of a fine,...
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Corsair announced 16GB and 24GB Dominator DDR3 memory kits for workstation-level computers. The new DRAM kits feature a clock speed of 1600MHz. The 24GB Dominator DDR3 memory kit is designed for use with three-channel CPUs while the 16GB Dominator DDR3 memory kit is designed for use on dual channel platforms based on the P55 chip set. Corsair® Expands Dominator® Family with New Ultra-High Density 16GB and 24GB Memory Kits – Unmatched combination of speed and density ushered in with 1600MHz modules – FREMONT, California, April 6, 2010 — Corsair, a worldwide supplier of high performance computer and flash memory products, today announced new 16GB and 24GB Dominator DDR3 memory kits for...
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Information on a supposed DRAM breakthrough has been running hot across the wires, but the press release from Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) that's sparked techie interest across the Internet is a tad misleading. There's nothing factually incorrect regarding the group's achievement (at least not as far as we know), but the gap between where we are today and a commercially viable FeDRAM design is much, much wider than implied. The PR states that the Semiconductor Research Corporation and Yale University have jointly developed "a new DRAM cell using ferroelectric layers that could significantly increase the technological and market competitiveness for DRAM technology." "According to early...
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For many, it's not difficult to remember back when USB flash drives topped out at around 8GB and demanded a near fortune. Today, these minuscule drives are near ubiquitous, and with flash prices in free fall, a rather sizable one (capacity wise, not size wise) can be had for not too much dough.But, even big corporations like Intel and Micron know that 128GB in your pocket just isn't enough for some (or even 256GB), so we're not surprised to hear that the two have joined together in order to spearhead development in the realm and pave the way for 1TB+ flash drives. Specifically, the duo today announced the development of a new 3-bit-per-cell (3bpc) multi-level cell (MLC) NAND technology, which...
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If recent technology news is any indication, Samsung has taken the concept of spending innovating one's way out of a recession and is running with the ball for all it's worth. We discussed the company's plans to move ahead with 450mm wafer production a few days ago; news today indicates the electronics manufacturer will invest $790 million into upgrading its DRAM production facilities in the second half of this year. Samsung believes the shift to a smaller process technology will improve production productivity (dies-per-wafer) by up to 60 percent, assuming equal yields. That cost savings eventually gets passed on to consumers, while the smaller process should theoretically allow for cooler,...
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We can't say for certain, but it sure feels like Rambus is doing its best to redirect attention away from its recent legal tussle with NVIDIA and onto more, shall we say, positive matters. Just a day after NVIDIA made clear that Rambus had withdrawn its complaints in court, the California-based memory maker announced that it had shipped over 100 million of its XDR DRAM modules worldwide. We aren't mathematicians by trade, but 100 million sure isn't anything to scoff at. The company's obviously not satisfied with such a figure, however, as just recently we learned that it was toiling away in an attempt to move DDR3 RAM beyond the 3200Mbps threshold. While you sit back and offer a round of congratulations...
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Leave it to Rambus to keep the memory industry from resting on its laurels. Currently, DDR3 has a data rate limit of 3200Mbps, but all that's gearing up to change. Announced today, Rambus has unveiled a set of innovations that can advance computing main memory beyond said limit, and needless to say, these "advancements" are available now for licensing. The collection of improvements promises to let designers achieve higher memory data rates, higher effective throughput, better power efficiency and the increased capacity necessary for future computing applications. Craig Hampel, Rambus Fellow, gloated quite heavily about the largely secretive announcement: "Product advancements in multi-core computing,...
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