14 DAY TRIAL // It appears that Elpida Memory is ready to see what OEMs think of its latest DDR3 SDRAM designed with the TSV stacking technology, one that supposedly has visible energy efficiency benefits, among other things.
Being the developer of memory products that it is, Elpida is always working on some new technology to enhance its chips with.
The TSV stacking technology isn't exactly what one would call a new invention, since Elpida has been using it since 2004.
This does not mean it is in any way too outdated to benefit current-generation memory products, however.
In fact, Elpida has recently completed the making of an 8 Gb (1 GB) DDR3 SDRAM built out of four 2 GB SDRAMs.
What TSV allowed was the fitting of said four DRAMs on a single chip, making it not only small enough, but also power-efficient enough to be used in tablets, thin notebooks and other mobile computing systems.
For those that want numbers, the 8 Gb TSV DRAM will let notebook systems with SO-DIMM memory use 20% less energy during operation and 50% less during standby.
Even more, with the chip mounting area up to 70% smaller than other solutions of the same capacity, the DIMM socket can be eliminated altogether, since the chip height is decreased substantially.
This was possible because, as a three-dimensional stack packaging technology (stacks chips vertically through electrical connections) and needs fewer and shorter interconnecting wires.
Needless to say, the new product is superior to the one revealed in 2009, which uses TSV technology to stack together eight 1 Gb DDR3 SDRAMs.
Moving forward, Elpida will, no doubt, keep on improving on this technology, meaning that one can be sure the outfit will build on its experience once its manufacturing processes take another step forward and begin to utilize more and more advanced nodes.