Tuesday, February 7th 2017

Rambus Introduces High Bandwidth Memory PHY on GlobalFoundries FX-14

Rambus Inc. today announced the availability of its High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) Gen2 PHY developed for GLOBALFOUNDRIES high-performance FX-14 ASIC Platform. Built on the GLOBALFOUNDRIES 14nm FinFET (14LPP) process technology, the Rambus HBM PHY is aimed at networking and data center applications and designed for systems that require low latency and high bandwidth memory. This PHY is fully compliant with the JEDEC HBM2 standard and supports data rates up to 2000 Mbps per data pin, enabling a total bandwidth of 256 GB/s to meet the needs of today's most data-intensive tasks.

"Data center needs are continuously changing and we are at the forefront of delivering memory interface technology designed to meet today's most demanding workloads," said Luc Seraphin, senior vice president and general manager of the Rambus Memory and Interfaces division. "Through our collaboration with GLOBALFOUNDRIES, we are delivering a comprehensive and robust solution for high-performance data center and networking applications. Our HBM offering will allow data center solution developers to bring high performance memory closer to the CPU, thus reducing latency and improving the system throughput."

"With the rise of cloud computing and the growing needs of Big Data, the computing power of data centers is burdened more than ever and hardware manufacturers are being called upon to deliver new solutions that can meet these challenges," said Kevin O'Buckley, vice president product development GLOBALFOUNDRIES. "Working together with Rambus enables us to provide ASIC solutions to our customers with increased memory capacity and bandwidth, with improved power efficiency. This HBM innovation complements other advanced chip to chip interfaces in our ASIC platform, including our industry leading 56G Long Reach SerDes technology."

The Rambus HBM PHY delivers high performance with lower power consumption when compared to other memory solutions. It combines 2.5D packaging with a wider interface (1024 bits) at a lower clock speed, which results in a higher overall throughput while remaining energy efficient for even the most high-performance computing applications. Rambus experts perform complete signal and power integrity analysis on the entire 2.5D systems to ensure all signal and thermal requirements are met.

The HBM PHY is another key component in Rambus' memory and SerDes high-speed interface IP portfolio for networking and data center applications.
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15 Comments on Rambus Introduces High Bandwidth Memory PHY on GlobalFoundries FX-14

#1
xkm1948
Oh snap! It is that scam company again!
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#2
TheGuruStud
xkm1948Oh snap! It is that scam company again!
Yep lol. And remember those red hot RIMMs? They would literally burn you and were slower than PC133. What a joke company.
Posted on Reply
#3
RejZoR
256 GB/s total or per chip? Because if it's total, it's pointless. Same useless thing as RDRAM back in the early Pentium 4 days. Super expensive, hot and just theoretically faster than DDR RAM.
Posted on Reply
#4
Chaitanya
TheGuruStudYep lol. And remember those red hot RIMMs? They would literally burn you and were slower than PC133. What a joke company.
Also remember the dummy rams needed to get the ram working? I thought this company would have gone bust by now.
Posted on Reply
#5
Xajel
RejZoR256 GB/s total or per chip? Because if it's total, it's pointless. Same useless thing as RDRAM back in the early Pentium 4 days. Super expensive, hot and just theoretically faster than DDR RAM.
It's 2000mbps per data pin, or 250MB/s per data pin ( I don't know why they said 2000mbps and 256MB/s, unless they mean 2048mbps )...

This is actually same as the spec. of HBM2 which is 256GB/s per package ( HBM1 was 128GB/s per package )... remember that next gen. GPU's expected to have 512GB/s because of the use of two packages.

The announcement is just that any customer of Glofo HP FX-14nm process can be assured to have the PHY design ready, he will not have to invest on designing it from scratch... this means lower cost for adaptation and also make customers take a second look at Glofo as the maker if he's targeting HP 14nm process...

Same goes for other ASIC's, for example Fab's companies are working with ARM to ensure a ready design for any customer who want their services, so the customer does not need to pay for scratch designing, but the main design cost is shared between multi clients to save cost.. the client will only pay for his customization ( if any ).

It's just like buying a ready made template at much lower cost than designing from scratch, it's more appealing to customers ( lower cost and faster development ) and also a way for the Fab companies to attract more customer duo to lower cost and faster adaptation
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#7
RejZoR
Ferrum MasterPentium 3.
Pentium 3 and Pentium 4 :P The thing was, RDRAM hardly could justify extra cost even against SDR RAM, let alone later with DDR RAM (which was during P4 era). That's why I posted P4 only. Because that was really the breaking point when everyone realized RDRAM is a dead chip walking...
Posted on Reply
#8
Ferrum Master
RejZoRPentium 3 and Pentium 4 :p The thing was, RDRAM hardly could justify extra cost even against SDR RAM, let alone later with DDR RAM (which was during P4 era). That's why I posted P4 only. Because that was really the breaking point when everyone realized RDRAM is a dead chip walking...
Then remove the early word :p. i820 was horrid enough remain in memory.
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#9
RejZoR
Well, it was early Pentium 4 days. They later sacked this garbage and replaced it with normal DDR RAM. Still on Pentium 4's...
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#10
Mistral
Wait... Rambus is actually having something PRODUCED?
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#11
IRQ Conflict
Seriously? I thought Rambus had died as a company years ago? What have they been up to to keep themselves afloat?
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#12
Steevo
They had to do something with all the patent troll money. Why not attempt to make one small change to an already developed product and attempt to patent that with a few working samples, then turn around and sue years later claiming you made the design first.
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#13
Static~Charge
ChaitanyaAlso remember the dummy rams needed to get the ram working?
CRIMM -- Continuity Rambus Inline Memory Module. From Wikipedia:

"The design of many common Rambus memory controllers dictated that memory modules be installed in sets of two. Any remaining open memory slots must be filled with continuity RIMMs (CRIMMs.) These sticks provide no extra memory, and only served to propagate the signal to termination resistors on the motherboard instead of providing a dead end where signals would reflect. CRIMMs appear physically similar to regular RIMMs, except they lack integrated circuits (and their heat-spreaders)."

Long dead, and good riddance!
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#14
ERazer
IRQ ConflictSeriously? I thought Rambus had died as a company years ago? What have they been up to to keep themselves afloat?
being patent troll
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#15
newtekie1
Semi-Retired Folder
How long until they start suing every other company using HBM claiming they invented it?
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