Elpida's New 25nm 4Gb DDR3 Chip Is the World's Smallest

Samsung may have started work on 20nm chips, but it is Elpida that claims to have created the world's smallest 4 Gb DDR3 chip, based on the 25nm technology.

There is one main reason for how semiconductors get more and more energy-efficient over time, not to mention fast and, in the case of DRAM and NAND, capacious.

Basically, manufacturers periodically advance to a better manufacturing process, reducing package size and boosting all other aspects in the process.

Samsung is one of the companies that most recently gained a good reason to brag about, that being 20nm DDR3 DRAM manufacture.

Now, Elpida is gaining some renown of its own, for how it made what it names the smallest 4 Gigabit (Gb) DDR3 DRAM of all times.

Based on the fine-width 25nm process technology, it has a clock speed of 1,866 MHz and can work at two voltage settings.

The low-voltage option is for 1.35V, while the other is the more or less common standard of 1.5 V.

So far, one might say that the chip is already shaping up to be quite the impressive newcomer, but things don't stop here.

Elpida was able to make it draw 25-30% less operating current than the 30nm 4 Gb DRAMs, as well as 30-50% less during standby.

As for productivity, the 45% boost is not so much an extra perk as it is a consequence of the manufacturing node getting smaller and, thus, allowing for the compact size of the chip.

Unfortunately, though Elpida did formalize this newest accomplishment, it won't have anything to show off until a bit later in the year (2011), when sample shipments and, eventually, mass production finally kick off.

PCs, mobile phones, tablets, consumer electronics, enterprise applications and pretty much everything else out there than needs RAM will be able to benefit.