IBM Announces Memory Chip Advancement
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A new semiconductor alloy jointly developed by IBM and its partners will spur the development of faster and smaller memory chips. The companies say the advancements would lead to smaller chips than currently possible with flash memory.
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A tiny, fully functional, 70-megabit static random access memory computer chip crammed with more than 500 million transistors has been developed by researchers at Intel Corp.
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Samsung Electronics Co. said Tuesday it has developed a more advanced flash memory chip that will allow increased data storage in digital products such as music players.
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(InfoWorld) - In an upgrade that could improve chip performance for gamers and multimedia users, IBM plans to double the performance of its microprocessors in 2008 by using smaller, more efficient memory, according to a paper presented at the ISSCC (International Solid State Circuits Conference) trade show in San Francisco Wednesday. IBM plans to use DRAM (dynamic RAM) instead of SRAM (static RAM) as the embedded memory cache built onto each chip. The change will allow each chip to store its data in one-third the area and use one-fifth the electricity for standby power, said Subramanian Iyer, director of 45-nanometer technology development at IBM. The approach will vastly improve chip performance for multicore processors and for applications that need to move large amounts of graphic data, such as gaming, networking and image-intensive multimedia, he said. IBM is already using the new embedded DRAM (eDRAM) in 65nm prototype chips, and plans to roll it out commercially by 2008 for its entire range of 45nm chips, including its Power line. The technology could have a big impact on consumer electronics, since IBM supplies chips for all three of the top gaming consoles; Sony Computer Entertainment's PlayStation 3, Nintendo's Wii, and Microsoft's Xbox 360. A typical commercial microprocessor like Intel's Core 2 Duo devotes 60 percent of its surface area to memory, Iyer said. Replacing that with eDRAM cells taking up just one-third as much space will allow chip designers to build smaller chips and reduce the "run lengths," the length of wire that data must travel as it commutes around the chip, said John Barth, senior technology staff member and chief of eDRAM architecture for IBM. IBM has used embedded DRAM in its chips for the BlueGene supercomputer, but those PowerPC processors use moderately performing, bulk-technology DRAM, which is far slower than SRAM. To create the new design, IBM will add a high-speed type of DRAM to its current silicon-on-insulator (SOI) architecture. "This DRAM now is almost as fast as SRAM. It may not be as fast at the micro level, but when you get down to 45nm, it will be faster at the system level. It's going to just blow the doors off," Barth said. "A typical microprocessor takes 14 clock cycles to get data from its cache. Using DRAM slows that down, but only one clock [cycle]. By doubling the amount of memory on the die, we can get double-digit percentage gains at the system level." The advance comes at the same time that several other chip vendors are seeking better ways to move large quantities of graphics data. Advanced Micro Devices evenÂ acquired graphics card maker ATIÂ in 2006, and now plans to combine its graphics power with AMD's processing chips in a single chip called Fusion. That challenge was compounded in February, since Microsoft's new Vista OS has a graphics-intensive interface that demands increased PC storage space, faster processors and even separate graphics cards or coprocessors.
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IBM is spearheading a group to develop 32-nm system chips that includes AMD, Samsung, Toshiba, and others.
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IBM has successfully demonstrated a new technique for improving transistor performance that will help the company build smaller, more powerful chips in the next decade, company researchers said yesterday.
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Samsung Electronics Co. on Monday unveiled a new type of memory chip that it said will allow digital devices to work faster by saving new data more quickly.
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By John Markoff  Scientists at IBM and two partner companies have developed a promising material that they believe will lead to a new kind of computer memory chip able to meet the growing appetite for storing digital music, pictures and video.
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By AME Info, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates  Feb. 15--IBM MEMORY BREAKTHROUGH: IMB says its embedded dynamic random  access memory, or eDRAM, will effectively double microprocessor performance  while remaining power efficient, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
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IBM and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) have jointly developed a new method for implementing strained silicon technology on both positive and negative transistors, the companies are expected to announce today.
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US chipmaker AMD on Monday introduced a faster mobile chip, Athlon 64 processor 3000+, for thin and light notebook computers. The new chip enables a powerful 32-bit computing
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Matrix Semiconductor's memory chips have several layers of transistors rather than a single plane.
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A new chip-making technology that uses a special kind of electron microscope to draw the circuits and will lead to better memory chips.
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Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory  technology, announced today that it has begun mass producing the industry's  first 1Gigabit (Gb) DDR2 DRAM (dynamic random access memory) using 60  nanometer (nm)--class process technology.
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The new NAND chip design will increase throughput up to 5X
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A new type of memory could soon be available to device makers.
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Thanks to a new &#39;Dual Stress Liner&#39; strained silicon manufacturing technique, AMD and IBM today announced that new Athlon64 and Power processors, set to debut in early 2005, could offer a performance boost of up to 24 percent.