Crucial Technology Announces CrossFire Certified Memory
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Crucial Technology today announced the immediate availability of  CrossFire&#8482; Certified BallistixÂ®  and Ballistix TracerÂ® DDR2 modules. CrossFire  Certified memory modules have been tested to meet AMD's  high quality standards.
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In papers presented at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) today, IBM (NYSE: IBM) revealed a first-of-its-kind, on-chip memory technology that features the fastest access times ever recorded in eDRAM (embedded dynamic random access memory).
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In three years, PRAM could become the leading storage technology for solid-state MP3 players that now use flash memory. But does Samsung, which announced a working PRAM prototype today, really want to replace its own bread-and-butter?
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Rambus, the memory chip technology developer, is looking to the future world of multimedia as the way for its XDR memory chips to find their way into more mainstream products.The memory technology is currently used mainly in game consoles, but Japanese DRAM (dynamic RAM) maker Elpida Memory unveiled a speedy DRAM chip based on XDR technology, the 512Mb, 4.8GHz XDR DRAM. The chips are aimed at game consoles, HDTVs (high-definition televisions), PCs, servers and workstations.But one knock against the company is that while its products may be used in some high end applications, they have not trickled down into the mainstream because they cost too much compared to DDR2 (double date, second generation) DRAM and other technologies. Regardless, Rambus CEO Harold Hughes, sees 2008 as a breakout year for Rambus technology to enter higher volume production as it wins over some HDTV clients.He said people should also be on the lookout for XDR technology to make some headway into cellular phones and other mobile devices.Hughes was in Taipei for the Rambus Developer Forum, and discussed new products in an interview with IDG News Service (IDGNS).IDGNS: What are the major product areas Rambus will focus on in the next year for its XDR memory technology?Harold Hughes: I think 2008 will see a few big [technology trends] moving forward in computers, HDTVs and the game players, and some of the neatest stuff will come out on cell phones. Those are four markets where Rambus is well positioned, so we hope to have a great year.IDGNS: What is Rambus working on in the mobile market? Handsets, ultramobile PCs?Hughes: Consumers want everything that they have on a desktop in one of these things (he holds up an iPhone) and obviously the bandwidth requirements are very, very high relative to what used to be the case for a simple little phone, and all that needs to be supplied at incredibly low power. Well, we&#39;ve made what I think are some astonishing breakthroughs in low-power technology that are in many cases as much as 80 percent over existing technology. In applications where you&#39;re using full motion videos (TV on mobile phones) much lower power with full motion videos.We&#39;re looking forward to making our mark in the low-power and mobile market. Our approach will be to use the bandwidth cores available with XDR, but to use our very low power interfaces to drive those, and to do that not only through our suppliers but also to look to some of the major players in the cell phone industry to bring them to market in 2008 or 2009. It most likely won&#39;t be XDR as we know it, but it might be derived from XDR. It has to be high bandwidth and extremely low power and it has to have low packaging cost.IDGNS: Can you give an idea of what you mean by low power?Hughes: We have introduced some very interesting low-power technology. We put out a [research paper] and we showed that we could deliver 2.2Gbps at 100 milliwatts. Mind-bogglingly low, 2.2 milliwatts per gigabit per second. We could run it off two-double AA batteries. The joke we was that we would try to get it to run off of a potato. We passed 3,600 terabits of data through our interface with two-AA batteries, which is the equivalent of 100 DVDs.IDGNS: Why do you think XDR fits the HDTV market?The XDR products are doing very well in the gaming products and we&#39;ll talk about the HDTV market. It&#39;s truly amazing the kind of compute requirements there, but it&#39;s also a consumer electronics product so it&#39;s got all the issues of cost and it&#39;s also the size, the electronic migration, the fans and stuff, so it&#39;s really bandwidth per device, and that&#39;s where XDR really stands out, in bandwidth per device. Such that with one or two XDR devices, you can get adequate to deal with the 5-10Gbps of bandwidth these televisions are using. That&#39;s where working with companies like Elpida and other licensees we can have an adequate supply of XDR so we can do great things in the HDTV market.IDGNS: What PC trends will help push more Rambus memory into PCs?Hughes: The new generation of computers is going to have these multiple core processors, which are just driving incredibly attractive and interesting PCs. What&#39;s interesting is the nature of the cores. They are not only standard compute cores, but they are also graphics cores. For us, we&#39;re very happy on multiple levels. That&#39;s going to produce a greater need for memory bandwidth. In particular, the multi-core processors that have compute and graphics have conflicting needs insofar as the memory architecture is concerned. The computing requires capacity and graphics requires bandwidth. Rambus has a product called the XDR which offers multiple gigabytes of capacity and quite remarkable bandwidth, and in fact Elpida has productized a 4.8GHz part, so that&#39;s a pretty speedy product.IDGNS: Rambus appears to be doing well in products at the top-end of the market, such as game consoles, but how is the company working to target the mainstream and lower-cost markets?Keep in mind that we believe that embedded in DDR2 is no small part of Rambus technology and that unfortunately is the subject of lots of litigation and there&#39;s no indication that&#39;s going to stop in the near future. I think that&#39;s always inevitable with our business model. I think that&#39;s almost inevitable given our business model, putting aside the litigation aspects of it. For a 400-person company to have impact and for IP to have value, you must solve problems well out into the future. Those problems are only going to be usable initially be a relatively small subset, but as that then starts to proliferate through more supply and costs come down, then you see those products trickle down to the $200 laptop.I don&#39;t see that that model is going to change. We are working on memories that have truly staggering performance. Initially those will probably be actual parts incorporating as many of our features as possible, but by definition because of their performance there will be a limited number of applications that need it, but X number of years later, not only will those discrete parts become cheaper and likely migrate into higher volumes, but the ingredients in those parts are very likely to go into very low-performance, low-cost applications that are used widely.IDGNS: What else do you see for 2008 that&#39;s big?Hughes: Games will improve dramatically. The software development kits are continuing to improve such that I think games will be able to take advantage of more of the cycles. You know how they CAT scan a brain when its thinking? Well I suspect if they were to do the same thing with a cell processor on current games, it would show that a lot of those transistors aren&#39;t being turned on, especially when you&#39;re using an abstracted development code.Ultimately [game developers] will learn how to directly address hardware more and more and I think you&#39;ll see those games coming out more in 2008 and they&#39;ll probably be spectacular, frankly. Of course, I&#39;ve given up on games. Competing with your son is, well it&#39;s so humiliating. You&#39;re getting killed in a game and you don&#39;t even know what&#39;s going on.
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(InfoWorld) - The investment arm of chip maker Intel said Thursday it agreed to invest $65 million in Powertech Technology, a Taiwanese chip assembler that specializes in flash memory and DRAM (dynamic RAM). Intel Capital said the funds, along with capital from other investors Powertech expects to bring on board, will be used as working capital to support the continued growth of its operations. Intel is an active customer of Powertech, it said in a statement, and led the round of financing for Powertech. The announcement came as no surprise in Taiwan, where Chinese-language media had been reporting such a deal between Intel and Powertech was in the works. The investment is one indication of how competitive the NAND flash memory chip business has become, and the importance of Powertech's services. Intel entered the NAND flash memory fray byÂ partnering with Micron Technology, a deal the two companies announced in late 2005, and started early last year under the name IM Flash Technologies. They entered an already competitive industry that included South Korean heavyweights Samsung ElectronicsÂ and Hynix Semiconductor, as well as NAND flash developer SanDisk. NAND flash chips have become popular thanks to widespread use for song storage in digital music players, including Apple's iPod Shuffle and iPod nano. One bottleneck in NAND flash production is in chip assembly, where companies seal the chips inside protective coverings, the final step in the making of a chip. Powertech specializes in memory chip assembly, including NAND flash memory as well as DDR2 (double data rate, second generation) DRAM chips. The NAND business has hit a few speed bumps recently. The popularity of the chips caused companies to build too many new NAND production lines, causing a glut of chips on the market and sending prices tumbling. SanDisk announced a few weeks ago that it planned to lay off 10 percent of its work force in a bid to remain profitable despite steep price cuts on its chips. The Milpitas, California company said NAND flash memory chip prices have dropped 50 percent in the last two months.
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IBM unveiled new computer memory technology which it heralded as a boon for networking, gaming and multi-media applications.
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Smaller-capacity versions coming Q1 2008 Chip giant Intel has begun sampling a solid-state drive (SSD) designed for handheld devices. The product's known in the trade as 'a stack of Flash chips'.â¦
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Dem bones, dem bones Intel has formally launched 'Skulltrail', its two-CPU gaming motherboard that's ready for both AMD's CrossFire and Nvidia's SLI multi-GPU technologies.â¦
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AMD (Quote, Chart) and Fujitsu have embarked on a new line of advanced Flash memory to address an explosion of consumer electronics products, the companies said Tuesday.
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Dynamic RAM is enjoying a boost in mobile devices, which are hungry for small, cool, power-efficient chips.
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Samsung Electronics announced Monday that it has developed an 8GB NAND-type flash memory chip with a 60-nano design rule, paving the way for 16GB flash disks.
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Intel and STMicroelectronics have developed a new type of PCM (phase-change memory) chip that doubles the memory density over previous versions, giving a boost to an emerging technology that could one day replace the flash memory chips widely used in portable devices.The technology is still experimental, but the companies marked another step in its evolution, delivering samples of the new chips to device makers. Proponents say that PCM is more reliable than flash memory, and that it will offer faster data transfer speeds and be more durable.PCM uses a glass-like material that can change from an amorphous, or gaseous, state to a crystalline state as its atoms are rearranged. The state of the material corresponds to the 1s and 0s in computing, allowing it to be used to store data.As a result of their work, Intel and STMicro said the glass-like material can now be turned into four states instead of two, allowing it to retain twice the amount of data. The material can also exist in liquid and semi-liquid states.The advances from Intel and STMicro have made the chips smaller and more power-efficient, said Guilio Casagrande, director of advanced research and development at STMicro.Intel and STMicro presented their new developments on Wednesday at the International Solid States Circuits Conference in San Francisco.Numerous other companies have also been working on PCM, also known as PRAM, including IBM, Qimonda, Macronix, Infineon and Samsung.Phase-change memory has existed since the 1960s, but the cost of the technology and the energy required to drive change between one state and another was not competitive compared to other memory technologies like RAM and flash, said Cliff Smith, technology initiatives manager of Intel&#39;s flash group.PCM has the potential to give fast read and write speeds, while the existing NOR flash type is slow to write and NAND flash is slow to read, Casagrande said. PCM could eventually replace existing memory technologies because of its power efficiency and its ability to reduce data leaks, Casagrande said.Intel and STMicroelectronics signed a contract to develop PCM in 2003 and are in the process of establishing a flash-memory joint venture called Numonyx, due to launch by March 28. STMicro will hold a 48.6 percent stake of Numonyx, with Intel retaining 45.1 percent. The investment company Francisco Partners is also taking part.Numonyx will manufacture existing flash memory types until PCM is ready for market, Smith said. He expects PCM to appear first in devices such as cell phones in two to three years. Its use will eventually overtake that of DRAM, NOR, and NAND flash, he said.
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Guests from Crucial Technology and Diskeeper Corporation will appear on  radio talk show Let's Talk Computers. Crucial Technology is a division  of Micron Semiconductor Products, Inc., which is a wholly owned  subsidiary of Micron Technology, Inc. (NYSE: MU).
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Texas Memory Systems has introduced the flash-based RamSan-500 with a DRAM cache to make it faster.
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To celebrate its 10-year anniversary as the leading memory upgrade provider, Crucial Technology is offering a limited-edition anniversary memory module.
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Memory chips are now the most popular type of RAM used in PCs.
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The latest research from the company claims PC makers are accelerating their move to solid state memory, with hybrid drives being the early market entry choice.