Qimonda Will Manufacture 75nm XDR Memory

If you remember what XDRs are, then you'll also remember that Elpida is the only manufacturer who makes them. If you don't, then Google is your friend. But since I'm writing this, I might as well say a few words about it.

Rambus XDR is a type of memory derived from the original Rambus RDRam used by old socket 437 INTELs. The original memory had a lot of bandwidth, but it also had a high latency, motive for which it was pretty quickly abandoned in favor of the faster DDR.

Actual XDR modules use 8 bits per lane and have 8 or 16 lanes. At 400MHz, this translates into a 3.2 or 6.4GB/s of throughput. Because it uses a small yet efficient package, the XDR module can scale very well with projected frequencies comparable to the fastest DDR2 modules.

Qimonda's XDR enters the market following Rambus' XDR (I) specification and comes with a working frequency of 3.2 GHz - which is faster than the first XDR modules (rated at 2.4 GHz) produced in 2005, but matches the clock speed requirement of Sony's Playstation 3 which is in fact the only place where you can find this type of Ram.

Quimonda will produce modules in a 75 nm process while Samsung and Elpida currently ship XDR in 90 nm package and charge about $25 for a 64 MB module. Toshiba recently said that it too will produce XDR memory for "consumer, computing and communications applications" in 65 nm.

At this time, the use of XDR memory is limited to Sony's Playstation 3 console, which integrates four 512 Mb modules (equivalent to 256MB of Ram). Rumors have suggested that Nvidia and Ati might use XDR in the future, but it seems that GDDR3 and GDDR4 are more appealing at the moment.