14 DAY TRIAL // Elpida follows in Hynix's footsteps and reveals a development in no direct way related to the launch of Intel's Pineview processors. Even more coincidentally, this piece of news is, like that from Hynix, also about the developments concerning a certain memory product. Elpida has announced the entrance of its 40nm-based 2Gb DDR3 SDRAM into the mass production stage. Currently, the company is set to start manufacturing the new technology only at its Hiroshima plant, although it plans to extend the operation to Rexchip in the second quarter of 2010.
Elpida uses top-quality manufacturing equipment in both its Hiroshima plant and the Taiwan-based joint venture Rexchip Electronics. Thanks to its world-class expertise and the most advanced manufacturing technologies available, it was able to ramp up mass production just two months after the actual technology was developed.
The new SDRAM will improve Elpida's next generation of wafers and will improve all aspects of its products, including number of chips per wafer, performance and power usage.
The new 2Gb 40nm SDRAM enables the creation of wafers with 44% more chips compared to the 50nm-based technology and, thus, all upcoming DDR3 products will operate at peak DDR3 speed, namely 1.6Gbps. Also, the new SDRAM even uses less power than the one built with the 50nm manufacturing process, being able to operate on only 1.2V or 1.35V. Of course, the standard 1.5V is also supported. The low voltage implies that overall power consumption is reduced by half.
Elpida, as already mentioned, will start using its Taiwanese subsidiary Rexchip for manufacturing the chips in the second quarter of next year. This will likely be conditioned by the need to increase yield of 40nm products in order to reduce product cost. Also, ProMOS and Windbound might eventually gain the right to manufacture similar products depending on the evolution of the DRAM market.