Qimonda AG, a leading global memory supplier, today announced its technology roadmap down to the 30nm generation and featuring cell sizes of 4F². Qimonda's innovative Buried Wordline DRAM technology combines high performance, low power consumption and small chip sizes to further advance the company's diversified product portfolio. Qimonda is introducing this leading edge technology now in 65nm and plans to begin production of a 1 Gbit DDR2 in the second half of calendar 2008.

Qimonda AG today announced that it has started to ship samples of 1GB and 2GB DDR3 SO-DIMMs (Double Data Rate 3 Small Outline Dual In-line Memory Modules) to key customers for deployment in next-generation notebook PCs. Qimonda optimized its new DDR3 SO-DIMM offerings for high power-savings in an effort to lead the industry. Power efficiency is the key value proposition of the new DDR3 memory interface in mobile computing, as it allows for extended battery life at higher performance levels for notebooks and other mobile computing applications.

Qimonda AG, a leading supplier of memory products, today announced that it has begun to ship samples of its first 512Mb XDR DRAM. The XDR memory solution extends the Qimonda graphics RAM portfolio to better serve high-performance and high-bandwidth applications for the fast growing global computing and consumer electronics markets.

Qimonda AG, a globally leading memory solutions company, today announced that it has signed an agreement with Macronix International Co, Taiwan, on a joint development of non-volatile memory technologies. The co-operation project will focus on the development of different kinds of non-volatile memory technologies over a five year horizon. Both partners will share development costs and contribute engineering resources and know-how. Financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed.

Qimonda said it is developing with Supermicro FB-DIMM memory modules with decreased supply voltage to address one of the key concerns of this memory technology - power consumption. The new 800MHz FB DIMMs operate with a supply voltage of 1.5V, instead of the regular 1.8V. According to Qimonda the 16.6% reduction in voltage results in up to 20% reduction in direct system-level power consumption in a fully loaded system. Additional power and cost savings can be achieved as the memory modules show lower heat dissipation. Qimonda claims that the power savings do not cause performance loss. The company said that it has supplied the low-voltage FB-DIMMs to Supermicro in a 2GB configuration for a demonstration at the ongoing supercomputing conference SC07. The companies did not say when these devices will be available for purchase.

Memory manufacturer Qimonda claims to have started producing the worlds first 512MB GDDR5 chips. Like past GDDR revisions, GDDR5 increases the maximum bandwidth between a graphics processor and the graphics memory. GDDR5 boasts a whopping 20GB/s bandwidth, up from the GDDR4 bandwidth of 16GB/s. Qimonda claims that GDDR5 improves power consumption by downclocking unused VRAM. Qimonda will release their GDDR5 RAM "sometime in 2008". You can read the full Qimonda GDDR5 briefing here.

Sony Corporation and Qimonda AG, a leading supplier of memory products, today announced that they have signed an agreement to found the joint venture Qreatic Design. The scope of the joint venture is the design of high-performance, low power, embedded and customer specific DRAMs for consumer and graphic applications. According to the agreement, the 50:50 joint venture is intended to start with up to 30 specialists from Sony and Qimonda, bringing together their first-class engineering expertise for the mutual benefit of both companies.

Qimonda and Advantest to Start GDDR5 Testing

Qimonda AG, announced its cooperation with Advantest to develop a hardware set-up for GDDR5 (Graphics Double Data Rate 5) testing. The cooperation aims for a cost efficient high volume test solution for GDDR5 graphics DRAM (dynamic random access memory) devices. GDDR5 will become the next major graphics DRAM standard after GDDR3. GDDR5 memory performance will well exceed existing graphics standards. Its performance in addition to new features will make GDDR5 ideally suited for future high performance graphics applications like PC graphics cards or game consoles.

In order to outmaneuver its large competitor Samsung, memory chip vendor Qimonda plans to skip the GDDR4 graphics memory technology generation in favor of GDDR5. With the move, the company seeks to address the high end of the market. "While GDDR3 presently holds a share of about 90 percent of the high end PC graphics market, in 2011 the mainstream memory technology in this segment will be GDDR5 - not GDDR4...Most customers will move from GDDR3 directly to GDDR5." said Feurle. While GDDR4 offers several improvements in terms of performance and feature set over GDDR3, GDDR5 is intended to offer the missing low-power capability, along with tripling the performance of today's 800 MHz GDDR3 chips. In addition, it will offer features that enable more robust system designs, Feurle noted. The company presently is pressing ahead with the JEDEC standardization process and expects the standard to be finalized by summer 2007, with mass production scheduled for the first quarter of 2008.