Tag Archives: Samsung

How ya gonna’ control that DDR4 SDRAM next year? The 28nm answer.

Cadence has just completed testing of its DDR4 SDRAM controller and PHY in two of the TSMC 28nm process technologies: 28HPM and 28HP. The DDR4 PHY exceeds the data rates needed to operate DDR-2400 SDRAMs and it is interoperable with … Continue reading

Posted in DDR, DDR3, DDR4, DRAM, LPDDR2, SDRAM | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Initial Hybrid Memory Cube short-reach interconnect specification issued to Consortium adopters

The Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium (HMCC), now supported by the three top DRAM vendors (Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron), has just issued an initial draft specification for the Hybrid Memory Cube’s “short-reach interconnection across physical layers”—in other words, the short-reach … Continue reading

Posted in 3D, DRAM, HMC, Hybrid Memory Cube, Hynix, Micron, Samsung | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Beware of Geeks bearing gifts (SSDs)?

I love this article in Bloomberg Businessweek titled “Samsung Sends Out Geeks to Revamp Laptops With New Drives.” It reports that Samsung placed a roving pan-European army of “geeks” in the UK, France, and Germany to ambush pedestrians and offer … Continue reading

Posted in Samsung, SSD | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

How many DRAMs does it take to populate a supercomputer? 746,496 plus a lot of hot water for cooling

Jim Handy, The Memory Guy, posted a short blog about the 3-petaFLOP (peak) SuperMUC supercomputer at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre on the outskirts of Munich, Germany. (The “MUC” in SuperMUC is the 3-letter code for the Munich airport. Now that’s … Continue reading

Posted in DDR3, DRAM, Samsung, SDRAM | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Three Golliaths and a host of Davids meeting up on the storage battlefield. Who wins?

If you want to read a short, interesting overview of the combined HDD/SSD storage battlefield, look no further than a new article on The Register’s Web site. The article, titled “Will the titans of storage decide to flash their bits?” … Continue reading

Posted in Flash, HDD, Micron, Samsung, SSD | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Samsung starts to sample 16Gbyte DDR4 LRDIMMs using 30nm-class DDR4 memory chips

Today, Samsung announced that it has started to sample 16Gbyte DDR4 SDRAM RDIMMs (registered DIMMs) based on its 30nm-class DDR4 SDRAM chips. Last month, the company announced sampling of 8 and 16Gbyte DDR4 modules and a 2Gbyte DDR4 module was … Continue reading

Posted in DDR4, Samsung | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Third Samsung memory video, well I’ll let you decide just how amusing this one is…

For the last two days, I’ve posted blog entries about two amusing Samsung memory videos aimed at memory consumers with fanciful supervillians named Fiona Freeze and Battery Brutus who caused havoc by inducing memory freezes and excessive battery drain. Samsung … Continue reading

Posted in Samsung | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

ARM, HP, and SK hynix join Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium (HMCC). First spec due by end of year

Add ARM, HP, and SK hynix to the growing list of companies in the Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium (HMCC). The three new members join the original founding companies, Micron and Samsung, along with Altera, IBM, Microsoft, Open-Silicon, and Xilinx plus … Continue reading

Posted in 3D, DRAM, HMC, Hybrid Memory Cube, Hynix | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Second Samsung memory video just as amusing as the first

Yesterday, I posted a blog entry about an amusing Samsung memory video aimed at memory consumers with a fanciful supervillian named Fiona Freeze who was responsible for causing device freezups. Today, I present the Samsung Memory Battery Brutus video. Battery … Continue reading

Posted in DRAM, Samsung | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Samsung memory video “movie trailer” plays it cool

There are few things as geeky as deep-tech memory discussions so it’s a joy when you find something that raises the bar. Samsung did that last month with this video:

Posted in Storage | Tagged | 1 Comment

Samsung’s 20nm-class DDR3 SDRAM runs on 1.35V, saves 2/3 of the power used by 50nm-class, 1.5V SDRAM

Not all DDR3 SDRAM is created equal. That’s the message Samsung is spreading lately by talking about its 20nm-class DDR3 SDRAM. The company is using 1.5V, 50nm-class DDR3 SDRAM as a benchmark and says that a server loaded with 96Mbytes … Continue reading

Posted in DDR3, DRAM, SDRAM | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

SK Hynix places bet on third wannabe non-volatile memory technology, phase-change memory, with IBM

When I was really young, I used to play a card game called “Pit” where you tried to corner the market on a particular commodity like oranges, sugar, soybeans, or corn. The game was based on the trading pits of … Continue reading

Posted in Hynix, Memristor, MRAM, NAND, PCM | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

It’s Official: Microsoft joins 3D Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium with Micron, Samsung, Altera, IBM, Open-Silicon, and Xilinx

Last week, the Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium announced that Microsoft had joined Micron, Samsung, Altera, IBM, Open-Silicon, and Xilinx in the development of high-performance 3D SDRAM subsystems based on the Hybrid Memory Cube. For more information on the Hybrid Memory … Continue reading

Posted in 3D, DRAM, HMC, Hybrid Memory Cube | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Simple three-bar graph explains all the engineering economics of 3D memory you need to know

The January IEEE Spectrum contained an article titled “3-D Chips Grow Up.” The article reproduced a simple Samsung bar graph about the very real advantages of 3D memory interconnect. That graph tells you all you need to know about why … Continue reading

Posted in 3D, SDRAM | Tagged , | 2 Comments

ISQED: Who and what will win the Universal Memory Derby?

Professor Cristophe Muller of Aix-Marseille University gave an excellent overview of non-volatile semiconductor memory as the third ISQED keynote this week. It’s a very good overview of today’s landscape and well worth discussing in a wider forum like this blog. … Continue reading

Posted in DRAM, Flash, Memristor, Micron, MRAM, NAND, NOR, ReRAM, SDRAM | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Where does LPDDR3 SDRAM fit in the low-power memory universe? How about Wide I/O SDRAM?

Marc Greenberg, Director of Product Marketing in the Cadence SoC Realization Design IP Group, just sent me some slides in connection with the recent introduction of the Cadence design and verification IP portfolio for LPDDR3 low-power SDRAM. I’ve already written … Continue reading

Posted in DDR, DDR3, LPDDR, LPDDR2, LPDDR3, SDRAM, Wide I/O | Tagged , | 2 Comments

More DDR4, DDR3, and 3D IC technical details from ISSCC, courtesy of memory analyst and expert Jim Handy

Semiconductor memory analyst and expert Jim Handy has just published an overview of some memory papers given at last week’s ISSCC. Handy’s article on the ElectroIQ web site supplements some of the previous Denali Memory Report blog entries published earlier … Continue reading

Posted in 3D, DDR3, DDR4, DRAM, SDRAM | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Operational DDR4 SDRAM prototypes appear at ISSCC

As reported this week by several Web sites including Techeye.net, Samsung and Hynix both demonstrated working prototypes of DDR4 SDRAM at the ISSCC conference in San Francisco this week. The Samsung and Hynix DDR4 memories were manufactured in 30nm and … Continue reading

Posted in DDR4, SDRAM | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Paper predicts the bleak future of SSDs and NAND Flash memory

An interesting and disturbing paper titled “The Bleak Future of NAND Flash Memory” written by two researchers at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and one Microsoft employee uses current trends with … Continue reading

Posted in 3D, Flash, Memcon, Memristor, Micron, MLC, MRAM, NAND, SSD | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Review of Samsung SM825 Enterprise SSD reveals backup supercapacitors inside

Data security is everything for enterprise storage and that’s why this StorageReview.com teardown analysis of the Samsung SM825 Enterprise SSD is so interesting. Sure, the drive has a sleek aluminum case that’s worthy of a SuperBowl commercial but inside you’ll … Continue reading

Posted in SSD | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Could the memory business be a major driver for the semiconductor foundry business? MonolithIC 3D’s Deepak Sekar says “Yes!”

Deepak Sekar, Chief Scientist at MonolithIC 3D, has just published a provocative blog with big implications for both the semiconductor memory and foundry businesses. His premise is that even though Samsung has “only” about 7% of the semiconductor foundry business, … Continue reading

Posted in DRAM | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Samsung packages 4Gbytes of NAND Flash with LPDDR2 DRAM for smartphone and other embedded applications

Samsung has announced that it has started volume production of a combined NAND Flash/DRAM “embedded multichip module” (eMCP). The module combines 30nm-class LPDDR2 DRAM chips (packaged capacities of 256, 512, or 768 Mbytes) with 4Gbytes of 20nm-class NAND Flash in … Continue reading

Posted in DRAM, LPDDR2, NAND | Tagged | Leave a comment