Statistics flip off piracy claims

I don't know about you, but sometimes all this talk about PC gaming gets me down. There's the developers who say piracy is killing their sales and PC gaming in general, and/or they're not doing PC exclusives or even ports anymore. It's not 100% unfounded, as piracy rates can be huge sometimes, but there are several things inaccurate with this theory, not the least of them being pirating doesn't necessarily mean a given person isn't also buying the game. But that's a whole thing in itself, and if you're keen on it, you can read more here.

My point is with all this is sometimes it's easy to wonder why anything gets ported and/or made exclusively for the PC. Well, some new statistics from Jon Peddie Research (JPR), "the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia," take that perception and turn it on its head -- they're downright uplifting. To start off:

• The Enthusiast segment has a worldwide compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9%
• The Performance segment will have a CAGR of 19%
• The Mainstream segment CAGR is 21%
Gaming PCs touch all segments of the market, with the most expensive at the high-end, known as the Enthusiast segment where the utilization for gaming is highest, down to the mainstream where the purchase motivation for gaming is about 6 percent.

Indeed, it's not all good news, but it's certainly in a helluva lot better shape than I'd been led to believe. The report goes on to say the total value for PC gaming hardware this year has been just over $20 billion (!!!), and will grow to over $34bn by 2012. These systems, they say, pull in an additional $6bn in software and services sales.

And of course, this all has a relationship with the economic recession and console gaming. It seems the "assumed growth" of console gaming may be negatively affected, and all because of HDTVs. "The cost of an HDTV for the console is a serious investment," the report reads, "Particularly when a console is limited in what it can do, unlike a personal computer." I can attest myself to this, as I've recently said "Phwew, glad I'm saving money by not buying an HDTV/console." Sure it'd all be very nice, but console gaming is more expensive than it's ever been.

Now, it's not all rainbows and sunshine -- naturally different countries have different habits when it comes to PC gaming, and the research company advises hardware suppliers, having studied thirty-seven countries in seven regions: "Don't get caught sending the wrong stuff to the wrong place." This is the report with the "highest granularity" on PC gaming hardware ever, so it's not to be taken lightly.

In terms of gaming PCs, notebooks showed strong gains. The "DIY and aftermarket" sector, meanwhile, was found to be "robust", with lots of folk who upgrade their systems with high-performance gaming graphics boards.

"Don't let the retail numbers fool you," said Ted Pollak, co-author of the report series. "Enthusiast PC gamers often latch onto one or two games that offer multiplayer options and stick to these titles for years. Hardware is where they spend the big bucks. The retail numbers don't capture the casual and digitally distributed games either. Retail software figures are not an accurate barometer for the health of the PC gaming industry."

Perhaps then developers should make less games for the PC, and focus more on quality (and less on DRM)? Myself, I like to play quite a few PC games, but I could certainly see his theory being accurate (see: Diablo, StarCraft, Unreal, etc) for the general population.

"The PC Gaming Hardware industry is a worldwide growth phenomenon and there are striking changes to the environment on the horizon," said Dr. Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie research. "Don't get caught surprised - our PC gaming hardware reports will provide virtual binoculars for companies involved in the space so that they are prepared for the approaching shifts. Now, more than ever, suppliers can't afford to make any missteps in their marketing and sales strategies."

Power savings of over 40% for Servers and PCs

Samsung brings some big news today, the company has decided to debut their newest DDR3 chips using 50nm technology and also unleashing news of increased power savings and higher productivity levels compared to DDR2 of equivalent density, the new modules are slated to arrive later this year but already the talk is being turned out about 16GB RIMM's being a possibility as 8GB RIMMs or 4GB SODIMMs, the memory market just got a huge boost for delivering high capacity to the end user.

The 2GB chips are doing quite well in testing, reducing the consumption normally found between 2 1GB chips by 40% in a single module solution, on top of this the company notes that they're able to pull a data rate of 1.3Gbps at 1.35 or 1.5v while giving a smaller thermal footprint in the process. The company seems to be slated to go full steam into 50nm processing with teh 2Gb DDR3 being the first application of it.

With the companies in the industry already getting behind DDR3 it seems that this should prove to be quite useful by years end, for those looking to jump into 4GB kits it might be wise to just wait around a little more and see how this development changes the SKU's that we see right now. One thing is certain as well, 64bit editions of XP and Vista will probably be moving quite a bit faster if 8GB kits start to become a mainstream possibility given the existing memory cap on 32bit editions.

As more comes out of Samsung on the chips we'll have it out there for sure.

Random Access Marketing

Joining the ranks of many other products branded with the trademark of top pro-gamer John Wendel, you can now purchase Fatal1ty memory from OCZ.

The "Fatal1ty Edition" memory comes in three flavors: OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 4 GB kits (5-4-4-18), DDR2 PC2-8500 2GB kits (5-5-5-15), and DDR3 PC3-10666 2GB/4GB kits (9-9-9-26.)

Easily North America's most famous gamer, John Wendell started his own Fatal1ty Inc. buisness a few years ago, and currently performs as the official spokesman of the Championship Gaming Series.

Troll Alert

Don't you just love it when standards bodies are snookered into adopting standards where there are submarine patents awaiting?

Rambus claims that Nvidia (and everyone under the sun probably) is violating 17 Rambus patents by interfacing to SDR, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, GDDR and GDDR3 memory before paying it to license "the technology".

Hopefully the claims get tossed out of court. Rambus in the past has run into trouble for trying to collect on patents it owns but did not disclose ownership of when sitting on memory standards committee's.

 

One more required piece of a future quantum computer?

Researchers from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a nanowire based memory system that has the potential to vastily increase digital storage densities.

The experimental data-storage device uses "core-shell nanowires" to store three possible states: a '0', '1', and '2'. Each nanowire contains two different phase-changing materials that are able to switch between a crystalline and amorphous state. 

Having a third available electric state could conceivably exponentially increase the amount of information stored in a device using these nanowires. It is perhaps also conceivable that this sort of technology could help further contribute to the development of quantum computers, which also operate beyond binary, with so-called 'qubits' that are capable of recognizing three states: off, on, and a third state which is a quantum superimposition of both on and off.

 

Uses PS3 technology

A newly constructed American military supercomputer has surpassed the computing speed record at more than 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second, reaching the long-sought petaflop measurement, and sooner than expected. At this point, it doubly exceeds the speed of the previously fastest machine, I.B.M's BlueGene/L, who also made this, the aptly named 'Roadrunner.'

Part of the design includes 12,960 chips which function as an improved version of the company's Cell microprocessor, the parallel processing chip originally made for the PlayStation 3. The chips are used as 'accelerators' for portions of calculations.

Thomas P. D’Agostino, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, says if all six billion people in the world used hand calculators 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it would take them more than half a lifetime (46 years) to do what the Roadrunner is capable of in one day. I'm betting the Roadrunner itself performed that calculation.

The supercomputer cost $133 million (that's it?) and will be used "principally to solve classified military problems to ensure that the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons will continue to work correctly as they age." Here's the part I love, though: it will also be used to study scientific problems like climate change. I'm having trouble comprehending that proposition meeting.

Peter J. Ungaro, chief executive of Cray, a maker of supercomputers says “it’s a sign that we are maintaining our position," though pointing out “the real competitiveness is based on the discoveries that are based on the machines.”

Of course, there's always something left to achieve, and the next goals in mind are the exaflop, (one quintillion calculations per second), then the zettaflop, yottaflop and xeraflop. Many flops.

2462 MHz isn't all that slow at all

Overclockers at Corsair Labs have reached a new record for DDR3 frequency. The CPU-Z validated speed of 2462 MHz was reached with a single stick of 1GB of Dominator memory, and was announced today. The 9-9-9-24 timed RAM was paired with a X48 chipset Asus P5E3 Premium motherboard, and a E8400 CPU running at 3.7 GHz.

While the consumer migration from DDR2 to DDR3 has been a little slower than some had expected, 2008 may be the year DDR3 takes off as speeds finally climb high enough to make some of the extra premium charged for DDR3 worth paying.

“This World Record demonstrates the overclocking and high speed memory expertise within Corsair Labs and definitely pushes the memory enthusiast community to achieve even faster, more outrageous speeds," said Corsair engineer, Martin Mueller.

The Dominator memory uses "DHX technology", which is a quad-layer heat sink design which helps keep the RAM cool.

Watercooled high speed DDR2 memory for you and me

Personally, I am not yet convinced of the benefit of water cooling memory - but it sure does look cool.

OCZ has announced their 4GB Flex-II PC2-9200 memory kit consisting of two 2GB Dimm's. Last year we reviewed the 2GB version of the kit (consisting of two one GB modules) and found it to be very good memory - even without using water cooling.

Who knows? Maybe we'll torture test these modules too...

And the Megahurtz game is afoot...

The new Project X DDR3-2000 kit is hand tested to work at 2000MHz in an Asus Striker II Extreme motherboard - and even if you can't quite reach 2000MHz in another board, you can bet it will still go really, really fast :)

SuperTalent says that Project X memory is very high speed memory with aggressively tuned latencies and an oversized aluminium heatsink containing 106% more aluminium mass than other heatsinks.

Apparently the W2000UX2GP kit will start shipping today for less than $400

DDR2 prices - and memory manufacturers profits - are down. Will we see another convenient shortage and rising prices?

Call me cynical if you must, but I am seeing some disturbing trends with memory.

First we have the ridiculously overpriced DDR3 being pushed onto the market - and newer chipsets are trying to force adoption by making DDR3-only motherboards.

Next, now that DDR2 is cheap and plentiful, memory makers are crying that they are losing money.

Mind you, I wonder which of the three ways of "losing money" it really is:

1) selling the chips for less than they cost to produce (to me, this is really losing money)

2) selling chips for less than desired margins (to me this is not losing money - just the free market at work)

3) not selling enough high margin DDR3 products with their ridiculous prices and crying over low DDR2 prices while trying to pay for DDR3 masks (tough cookies, don't try to force new memory!)

Only in case of (1) do I feel anything for the manufacturers.

Today I read two interesting news bits at Digitimes.

Hynix is claiming that its yields are not as good as it expected on its 66nm production lines, "only" getting 90% yields. Six months after starting production of the new 66nm parts they get 90% yields and are crying over the "lost revenue" of the spoiled 10%. FIX THE PROCESS! Find out where the fault lies, don't use it as an excuse to jack up prices - THEN - miracously and quickly fix the yields. They are still planning to migrate to 54nm later this year... oh boy, I can hear a repeat performance of "our yields are not as good as we expected, we have to raise prices" later this year.

Meanwhile, Elpida wants to replace Samsung as the #1 supplier of DRAM. Bully for them, competition is good for us consumers. What's not so good is that it plans to raise contract quotes and apparently wants to talk to its competitors about "resuming healthy pricing" - otherwise known as price fixing. Geez! What happened to healthy competition? They want to double the price of DDR2, claiming that if they don't, it will shoot to more than 5x the current price. Riiight.

 

Corsair, OCZ and Patriot show FAST DDR3 at CeBIT

Here are three new pairs of fast DDR3 sticks shown at CeBIT:

• Corsair DDR3 @ 2133MHz (PC3-17064) shown running at 8-8-8-24-2T
• OCZ DDR3 @ 2100MHz (PC3-16800) specified at 10-10-10-?
• Patriot DDR3 @ 2000MHz (PC3-16000) specified at 8-8-8-20 but may run at 7-7-7-20

Corsair: Apparently the modules are only rated for this speed on yet unreleased Nvidia 790i boards.

OCZ: I don't like the thick water cooling heatsink jacket it will make it impossible to install two pairs of DIMM's on a board

Patriot: I like the slightly conservative ratings; if it really works at 7-7-7-20 @ 2000MHz it will rock.

 

Increased SSD, flash card and USB key storage here we come!

Toshiba announced that it has developed a 16 gigabit nand flash chip in collaboration with SanDisk. The 43nm device is only 120 mm2 in size, taking 30% less space than the 56nm flash chips of the same density.

Toshiba also intends to manufacture 32Gb multi-level cell flash devices sometime between July and September.

Who needs hard drives?

Now that solid state disks are becoming readily available, albeit only small capacity drives are affordable to mere mortals, Toshiba gets bragging rights for showing off 15nm flash chips.

According to nikkei.net, 15nm geometry will lead to 100Gb flash chips - that's a whopping 12.5GB per chip, so a 100 gigabyte SSD could be built with only eight chips!

Frankly, as soon as manufacturers can pull this off at reasonable prices, hard drives will go the way of the Dodo.

Is Samsung going to introduce Samsung branded memory modules?

Third-party memory module producers cannot be pleased; there is a report that Samsung will start marketing its own branded memory modules - at which point it may start selling less memory chips to third party module makers.

At this point, I don't know exactly how this will affect the consumer market. Currently, Samsung sold the raw chips and various OEM's made modules based on them, competing based on warranty, speed grades and brand recognition.

If Samsung starts reducing the ammount of chips it sells on the open market, and starts selling its own modules, it will come as a double whammy to all those OEM's as the presumably constrained supply will force OEM pricing up, while Samsung's internal pricing will allow it to offer modules for less, putting it into a position to potentially squeeze many OEM's out of the memory module market.

Ofcourse, Samsung is not the only memory vendor, and other memory manufacturers are likely to increase the availability of their chips on the open market - which shold stabilize pricing.

 

Race Track memory could increase memory capacities by a hundred fold. Bye-bye hard drive.

To start with some recent history first.

Back in the early 1990's a fellow by the name of Stuart S. P. Parkin working for IBM did something we can all appreciate. He took his observations of some odd magnetic quantum effects in semiconductors and spun it into higher density HDD read/write heads. It did take him 2 year, but the results were astounding. We all owe our iPods to Mr. Parkin.

Oddly enough though, what he's proposing now could make hard drives obsolete someday. A new type of non-volatile memory that is both faster than current Flash and DRAM with 10 to 100 times the capacity. And perhaps most notable aspect of race track memory being that of its simple approach.

A wire loop to magneticly charge the two tracks below.

The physics/engineering behind the new memory involves constructing a track of verticlly standing wire loops around the edge of a silicon chip. Electric current passed through the loops is then used to manipulate the magnetic charge of nano-scale magnetic regions (or wire tracks) below. It's somewhat akin to how a hard drive writes data to the platter, but on a smaller scale and without a spinning motor or twitching armature. In this case, the data medium does't move while the read/write heads do.

It does bode well in terms of future computin, this magnetic-racetrack memory. The memory would be non-volitaile, would require little current for the sub-molucular positioning of the read/write head(s). During their experimantations, Parkin and his team were able to slide a microscopic magnet along a notched wire at a speed of 100 meters per second. Their latencies accheived were even more impressive, with read/write times down at a nanosecond.

It's a small start, but future models could rely upon 100 coils, all moving in tandum to simutanioulsy read and write 100 clusters of memory. In fact, it could almost be compared to those days of yerteryear tape drives. In this case however, it's the tape that's stationary and the read/write head that moves.

“Finally, after all these years, we’re reaching fundamental physics limits,” Parkin said. “Racetrack says we’re going to break those scaling rules by going into the third dimension.”

Certianlly sounds impressive, but don't get too excited. What experiments Parkin and his team have compleated won't function as memory yet, they're simply the indvidual portions of the greater model. As for those involved and those observing, the usual tech industry humility applies.

There have been the expected suggestions of wrist-watch televisions, terabyte MP3 players and 100% solid state computers. There may even come the possibility of PID (Processing In Memory) for small scale computing.

Shrinking geometry for memory devices

Elpida, a Japanese memory manufacturer, reportedly will be first to produce 65nm geometry dynamic ram chips as it plans to produce them during the current fiscal year at its Hiroshima plant.

Using a 65nm process to make the memory chips Elpida will be able to get more chips from each wafer, giving it a price advantage in an increasingly commoditized memory market.

Phase change memory, still a fews years away, could become the fastest memory we would ever know.

Years ago, I had a stack of archaic 5 1/4" floppy disks (still have some for some old Apple II computers). Then, the slightly small, added capacity of 3 1/2" disks (there's dozens kicking around my desk at home). CD's and DVD's consume two boxes (I should sort them). And now I'm collecting thumb drives (four with 7 GB of storage in total).

But there may come one storage technology to defeat them all; Phase Change memory. Developed by the Lithuanian-American scientist Stanford R. Ovshinsky back in the 1960's, PRAM (a.k.a. PCM, PRAM, PCRAM, Ovonic Unified Memory and Chalcogenide RAM C-RAM) relies on the physical change of a material to hold data, rather than the conventional storage of electrons, switching of transistor like gates, or the magnetic mediums we are familiar with today.

Using Chalcogenide glass (a type of glass containing either sulfur, selenium or tellurium), it becomes possible with electrical currents to change the physical structure of the glass from crystalline (structured) to amorphous (non-structured), and back again.

Both Intel and STMicroelectronics have been working towards PRAM memory in the hopes of unlocking its distinctive advantages over that of conventional memory. Phase change memory has been clocked in laboratory settings at nearly 100,000 times faster than conventional memory specs. It also claims faster write speeds at 1ms to 10ns per byte of data. Furthermore, the MTBF (MeanTimeBetweenFailure) is on the order of 100,000,000 writes per sector, where as regular flash memory can only withstand 10,000 to 100,000 writes per sector before signs of failure.

There are a couple of short comings to Phase Change memory though. First, since it is made out of the same materials that comprise the recordable medium upon CD's and DVD's, the compounds used must be heated to 600 Celsius and above to create enough convection turbulence within the material to have it become amorphous. Furthermore, higher than normal voltages are required for both the read and write phase of the memory. Significant obstacles to overcome, but ones that can be greatly reduced with further refinement and research.

Perhaps Phase Change memory will never make it to portable devices such as digital cameras, thumb drives and media player. But there of course will be a home for it in PC's and Servers that demand faster memory performance. Now all that remains is for the chipset designers to increase FSB speeds to stay on par with future memory speeds. 

Sorry, the first Phase Change memory launch is still a few years away.

DDR2 day's are numbered

Perhaps from reading William Henning's latest take on DDR2 vs DDR3, you may be familar with the current state of DDR3 RAM. In summary, right now DDR3 is fast, but the timings just aren't there yet to allow it to trump DDR2. Well, the march of technology continues on as Super Talent Technology accounced this week that they will soon be sending some lower-timing DDR3 sticks to market soon. It shouldn't be too long down the road before DDR2 goes the way of the polar ice caps.  

The three new Super Talent varities of memory include two dual-channel kits and one single module. The fastest of the bunch is the 1600 MHZ W1600UX2G7 dual-channel with 7-7-7-18 timings. This lovely stick of RAM requires 1.8 volts of juice, and will cost a new-technology premium price of around $650.

These memory-kits will all have black heat spreaders to help cool them down a bit. 

DDR3 picks up speed...

DDR3 is starting to show up in the market, and finally DDR3 memory speeds are rising to the point where it may actually outperform DDR2!

You've seen the reviews on the net; DDR3-1066 and DDR3-1333 don't appear to beat DDR2-1066 (mind you, I have not verified this for myself yet; fortunately some DDR3-1333 memory just arrived in the lab today)) - but now Corsair is announcing DDR3-2000 memory and showing DDR3-1600 memory... memory to fill the need for speed.

The TWIN3X2048-1600C10D DOMINATOR will supposedly be available after Computex is done, and frankly, I for one am eagerly awaiting DDR3-1600 memory (and faster!) to see how much of a difference it makes in real world tests.

Here's the press release:

CORSAIR ANNOUNCES WORLD'S FASTEST DDR3 MEMORY

 

Optimized for Current and Future Intel Platforms, Corsair demonstrates production-ready DDR3-1600 DOMINATOR and previews next generation speed grade at DDR3-2000

 

COMPUTEX – Taipei, Taiwan (June 4, 2007) – Corsair^® http://www.corsair.com, the worldwide leader in high performance computer and flash memory products, today unveiled the world's fastest production DDR3 memory rated at a blazing-fast 1,600MHz (PC3-12,800) and the world preview of the Corsair DOMINATOR^TM memory running at 2,000MHz (PC3-16,000). Live demonstration of the new DOMINATOR memory will be on display in the Corsair VIP suite (#1334) at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. The TWIN3X2048-1600C10D DOMINATOR is the latest addition to the Corsair line of high-performance memory modules. Also on display is the upcoming generation of DDR3 DOMINATORs, ranging from 1GB modules running at over 2,000MHz and 2GB modules showing performance promise for 64-bit based applications. All DDR3 products have been developed to support the new Intel^® P35 and X38 Express platforms, ensuring customers of an extreme user experience whether for gaming or applications with high computing needs.

 

The TWIN3X2048-1600C10D DOMINATOR will be available shortly after Computex. Both XMS3 DHX and XMS3 Classic products are currently available through Corsair's worldwide authorized dealer channel:

 

FAMILY	PART NUMBER	SPEED	LATENCIES
DOMINATOR	TWIN3X2048-1600C10D	1600MHz	10-8-8-24
XMS3 DHX	TWIN3X2048-1333C9DHX	1333MHz	9-9-9-24
XMS3 CLASSIC	TWIN3X2048-1333C9	1333MHz	9-9-9-24
	TWIN3X2048-1066C7	1066MHz	7-7-7-21

 

All DDR3 modules operate at lower memory voltages to deliver better performance with the same amount of power when compared to DDR2. Dynamic I/O Signal Termination and On-die Dynamic Termination (ODT) reduce the reflective signals transmitted to standby RAMs, thereby enabling support for higher memory frequencies. A larger prefetch means more data is immediately available for the processor and the differential data strobe reduces noise while accessing data, especially at higher frequencies.

 

"Corsair is supporting the industry's transition to DDR3 with a full line of highly-engineered memory solutions. Our partnerships with leading technology companies and suppliers have allowed us to be first-to-market with the world's fastest production DDR3 memory and demonstrating our next generation DOMINATOR running at 2GHz," said Jack Peterson, VP of Marketing at Corsair. "DDR3 memory technology brings scalability and features that DDR2 cannot deliver. The fact that we are able to realize 50% more memory speed rating at launch compared to the standard DDR3-1066 specification is simply stunning." continued Peterson.

 

Like their DDR2 brethren, DDR3 DOMINATOR and XMS3 DHX feature Corsair's patent-pending DHX technology - an innovative quad-layer heat sink design that optimizes memory performance and reliability by maximizing thermal dissipation. With DHX Technology, heat is removed via two paths – the leads of the BGA chips into the PCB (convective cooling) and the back of the BGA packages into the custom designed extruded aluminum heat sinks (conductive cooling).

 

"The enthusiast community demands solutions that push the envelope and are capable of delivering the highest level performance experience, and very fast DDR3 is the next step in delivering cutting-edge computing," said Steve R. Peterson, Director of Chipset & Graphics Marketing, Intel.  "We work closely with Corsair to help deliver a cutting edge experience for the enthusiast power user.  Corsair's release of the new DDR3-1600 DOMINATOR memory, combined with an Intel P35 or X38 Express chipset based motherboard, plus an Intel Extreme Edition CPU, shows just how exciting platforms based on DDR3 will be."

Competition getting tough for South Korean manufacturers

Increased production - due to increased competition - of DRAM chips is apparently cutting into the profits of DRAM manufacturers; with some claiming to be producing the parts below cost.

There are also suggestions that memory module manufacturers have been bargain hunting, and building up in-house stocks of chips - which may lead to reduced demand in the future, leading to even lower prices.

The real question is - are the manufacturers really hurting, really losing money, or are they just losing some of their previously fat margins? We all remember the artificial scarcities used to drive up prices, and the assorted fines for price fixing...

All I know is that I snapped up some good DDR2 modules at great prices, just in case.

NAND memory prices are showing some indications of rising, so if you want cheap flash products, now may be a good time to buy.

Micron officially supports DDR2 at 1066MHz

We received a press release from Micron - they have decided to officially support and ship DDR2 memory chips at 1066MHz data rate.

Now you may ask, why is this interesting? Have not a lot of memory module manufacturers been shipping PC2-8500 and faster (1066MHz and faster) modules for some time?

Good question.

But it does make a difference.

Current memory vendors "cherry pick" memory chips themselves to qualify for higher memory speeds - this means many hours of testing of tens of thousands of memory chips to find the ones that are fast enough to qualify for their highest speed modules.

The good news is that if the memory vendors will sell chips qualified to 1066MHz, the price of high end DDR2 modules should drop, as the dimm manufacturers will not have to spend so much time and money on testing themselves.

Here is the press release:

Micron Technology increases DDR2 Memory performance with the industry's fastest speed grades

Micron's New 1 Gigabit DDR2 DRAM Chips Operate at 1066 Megabits per Second; Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., VIA Technologies & Silicon Integrated Systems to Support Faster Memory Speeds

BOISE, Idaho, May 3, 2007 – Micron Technology, Inc., today announced sample availability of the industry's fastest main memory 1 gigabit (Gb) DDR2 components, capable of running at 1066 megabits per second (Mbps).

Used primarily in data-intensive computing applications, such as video editing or high-end gaming, Micron's new DDR2-1066 memory modules increase user productivity and make images on screen seem more life-like. Micron's DDR2-1066 memory offers an impressive 33 percent speed improvement over DDR2-800, currently the industry's fastest DDR2 speed available.

"The move to DDR2-1066 provides a significant increase in computing performance for our customers, without any necessary changes to the system design," said Brian Shirley, vice president of Micron's memory group. "With DDR2-1066, the lifespan of today's mainstream DDR2 systems can be extended."

The DDR2-1066 components are produced on Micron's industry-leading 78-nanometer 6F² process and operate at the JEDEC standard 1.8-volts. The 1 Gb component density allows for modules in densities ranging from 512 megabytes to 2 gigabytes. Micron has already generated industry support of its DDR2-1066 components from leading chipset companies including Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD), VIA Technologies, Inc. and Silicon Integrated Systems Corporation (SiS).

"AMD is committed to providing innovative technology platforms and solutions that allow our customers to realize their full potential," said Bob Brewer, corporate vice president and general manager of AMD's desktop division. "In the design of our upcoming native quad-core client processors, which we expect will be available in the second half of 2007, AMD is planning for DDR2-1066 memory support in our integrated memory controller with the expectation that it will be compatible with any future JEDEC standard that may be adopted. Dependent upon validated platforms and JEDEC support, AMD hopes Micron's innovative DDR2-1066 memory modules will provide an exemplary DRAM technology that can extend existing system designs and offer next-generation memory performance at a competitive price point."

"The increasingly advanced graphic and video features implemented within our core logic chipset solutions are demanding ever greater memory bandwidth to ensure smooth system performance, and DDR2-1066 can cost effectively fulfill this need for multiple market segments," said Chewei Lin, general manager of system platforms for VIA Technologies, Inc. "We see Micron's DDR2-1066 as a good fit for our upcoming chipsets across all the leading processor platforms, and look forward to the performance boost it will afford both business and home users."

        "The launch of Micron's DDR2-1066 offers up an incredible combination of performance and value. Micron successfully takes the lead to present high-bandwidth DDR2-1066. We believe that the reliability, stability, and compatibility of Micron DDR2-1066 will be undoubtedly amazing. SiS, as a leading chipset innovator, is pleased to see the new product success, and at the same time, SiS is dedicated to developing the next-generation chipsets for supporting DDR2-1066," said Daniel Chen, chief executive officer and president of SiS.

Availability and More Information
Samples of Micron's 1 Gb DDR2-1066 components are now available for select customers and volume production is expected in the third quarter of 2007. More information of Micron's family of DDR2 memory products can be found on its website at www.micron.com/products/dram/ddr2.

Can you imagine? A vending machine full of flash memory for digital photo flicking tourists. What will they think of next?

Cram a couple coins in to the slot, push a button or two, and a cold beverage, sugary sweet, or salted snack drops down to your awaiting hands. Move to the next machine and you can have your pick of SD, Compact Flash, or USB Thumb Drive to eat.

Memory giant Kingston has broken some new ground and opened up a whole new sales market. In conjunction with the Jersey based company MyMemory, the first (hopefully of many) memory vending machine has popped up in London's Gatwick airport. The perfect location if you ask me. You arrive in London for a relaxing two week vacation, digital camera in hand for a little sight seeing. But wait, you've already used up all of the space on your SD card snapping pics of your in flight meal and that really cute stewardess named Betty. You don't have a laptop with you (though Betty's phone number is scribbled on a napkin in your pocket), and you want to take some more pictures. Just find a memory vending machine.

Consumers "want instant access to SD cards and USB drives as they need them 24/7, so vending machines in public spaces was the most obvious solution." said Ann Keefe, Kingston's sales director.

Placed in high traffic areas (like airports), the machines will sell Kingston SD Cards, Compact Flash Cards, and Data Traveler USB Drives to the bit hungry tourist. The machines themselves will use a type of chip and or pin card transaction system (no roll of quarters needed) for payment. Sorta like a pre-paid debit card. If the scheme proves successful, more memory vending machines like this one will be rolled out across the UK, and perhaps even the world.    

In the need-more-memory department...

Has VISTA's memory requirements gotten you down? Mushkin is trying to cheer you up!

The new Mushkin XP2-6400 4-3-3-10 modules are EPP enabled, and come with "FrostByte" headspreaders and highly conductive thermal compounds are used to attach it to the memory chips. The modules operate at 2.2V.

Mushkin also announced their new XP2-8500 5-4-4-12 modules. These higher speed modules are also EPP enabled, and operate at 2.3V. Apparently the Mushkin XP2-8500 are the first 4GB modules rated to 1066MHz.

All Mushkin modules are tested beyond their rated speeds, so there should be some overclocking headroom

We will probably be taking a look at these modules soon.

 

Asus

Asus is going after Creative Lab's market share in the high end audio card market; Asus apparently intends to go head-to-head with the Creative Labs X-Fi cards, while offering better drivers. Asus is targeting those currently mostly-useless PCIe 1x slots with their Xonar D2X - an excellent choice as PCI appears to be going the way of the Dodo. The D2X claims 118dB SNR for playback, and 115dB for recording; and it is also certified for Dolby Digital, Dolby Live, DTS Connected and DTS 5.1 audio.

In a move likely to endear consumers and enrage the MPAA, the card added an analog loopback mode without requiring an external loopback cable, allowing you to digitize any sound output thru the card.

There will also be a Xonar D2, basically a PCI version of the D2X

Corsair

Corsair is apparently demonstrating DDR3-1066 modules running on an Intel P35 chipset. The modules were shown running with CAS-6 timing, slightly beating the JEDEC CAS-7 spec. Corsair also displayed DDR3-800 modules and stated they have DDR3-1333 running in their lab.

Personally, I don't see any point in DDR3 until the PC3-1333 modules come out at CAS-5 timing - or lower; otherwise current high end memory modules running at PC2-1066 4-4-4-12 will soundly trounce them.

Nvidia

Nvidia 7050 chipset motherboards for both Socket 775 and Socket AM2 were shown by a number of vendors. It will be interesting to see if they will noticably outperform existing GeForce 6150 designs.

While Nvidia has decided to delay the launch of its mainstream video cards until sometime in April, there apparently were some vendors showing G84 and G86 boards. The G84 powered GeForce 8600GTS should significantly outperform the 7900GT while being smaller; and will apparently have a 675MHz GPU clock with 256MB of 2GHz DDR3, all for around $200. The 8600GT will apparently be clocked at 540/1400 and sell for around $150. The 8500GT will apparently be G86 based, and sell for as little as $79 with 128MB.

 

Muskin joins the PC2-9200 club

Today, Mushkin announced their new XP2-9200 5-5-4 memory modules.

The XP2-9200 is available as either a single module or as a dual channel kit, and it is tested beyond its rated 1150MHz 5-5-4-12 timing. The modules also feature Enhanced Performance Profiles that allow EPP enabled BIOS's to automatically configure the system for its rated timings.

The modules have Mushkin's "FrostByte^TM" heat spreaders and use a highly conductive thermal transfer compound to ensure lower operating temperatures.