Qimonda Plans Energy Efficient DDR3 for 2009

With most of the IT industry heading towards greener and more energy efficient solutions, Qimonda also intends to leverage its newly launched production of energy-saving buried wordline technology (BML). This feature is expected to become available across the company's upcoming DDR3 memory modules, which the company is expected to debut next year.

 

According to a recent article on EE Times, recent studies have shown that 50 percent of the costs associated with data centers are mainly energy costs. This is a good enough reason for major companies to be determined to jump on the “going green” bandwagon, and the best way to get there is by lowering the power consumption of the memory subsystems within the servers. According to Qimonda, these memory subsystems are behind about 30 percent of the server's power consumption, more than the CPU, which is typically rated at about 25 percent of the power consumption.

 

Senior VP and General Manager Products for the memory maker, Robert Feurle, said that, “The changeover towards DDR3 will give us the chance to reposition us in the server [memory] market as energy efficiency leader”. Basically, Qimonda's bet for 2009 is on its power efficient BWL technology, with hopes it will help it gain a significant part of the market. Feurle also expects that the crossover from the current DDR2 to DDR3 will be led by power saving features. According to him, said crossover should take place sometime between Q2 and Q3 next year.

 

At the moment, Qimonda is already producing DDR3 chips, and even supplies 8GByte DIMMs. In the upcoming year, the company expects to introduce higher densities and lower supply voltages. 16GByte samples working at 1.35V are expected to become available in Q3 2009. If the company manages to keep up with its roadmap, it will be capable of selling planar 8GByte and 16GByte server modules beginning Q2/2009, while the roll-out of 32GByte high-density modules is slated for Q4/2009.