Another Company Announces DDR3 PC Memory

Martyn Williams, IDG News Service

TOKYO--Elpida Memory has completed development of its first DDR3 memory chip, the company said Wednesday. DDR3 is an improvement on existing computer memory and should help increase performance in personal computers, particularly in the area of multimedia applications.

The better performance should be realized because DDR3 chips can communicate with the rest of the computer at a much faster speed than today's most common memory chips can. At present, many computers use DDR memory that runs at 400 MHz. More advanced DDR2 memory is becoming popular: It can operate at speeds between 400 MHz and 800 MHz, although the fastest version is not currently in common use. Elpida's DDR3 chip works at 1.3 GHz.

The new chip offers another benefit: lower power consumption. It operates on a 1.5-volt supply versus the 1.8 volts used for DDR2 memory. While the difference is small, that can add up to extra battery life in battery-powered devices because the chips use less power themselves and don't get as hot, so less cooling is required.

Samsung Also in the Hunt

The Japanese company is not the first to announce development of a DDR3 chip. Earlier this year Samsung Electronics said it had developed a 512-megabit DDR3 chip that runs at 1.06 GHz, which is slightly slower than the Elpida chip announced Wednesday.

Elpida's DDR3 chip, which has a capacity of 512 megabits, will be available to the company's customers in early 2006 for evaluation, and commercial production is expected to begin sometime later in the year in accordance with customer demand, said Yuko Takahashi, a spokeswoman for the company in Tokyo. Looking ahead, the company plans to develop 1-gigabit and 2-gigabit versions of DDR3 chips, it said.