DRAM makers eye high-end graphics market
(According to Mercury Research, the market for high-end graphics memory is expected to grow 42% to US$1.5 billion in 2006, up from US$1.1 billion this year. Relatively small)
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Michael McManus, DigiTimes.com, Taipei [Wednesday 14 December 2005]
With the commodity DRAM market experiencing plunging prices and many DRAM suppliers already selling parts at prices below manufacturing costs, some DRAM vendors have turned their attention to specialty markets including high-end graphics and mobile applications to improve their margins.
Samsung Electronics has announced that it is mass producing what it claims to be the fastest graphics memory device in the world – a 900MHz GDDR3 (Graphic Double-Data-Rate 3) DRAM – which the company says is 50% faster than its previous computer memory chips produced in large volumes. The device is already being used in Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX 512 graphics cards, and ATI Technologies stated that it redesigned the memory controller in its recently announced architectures to take optimal advantage of Samsung’s high-speed memory.
The 512Mbit 900MHz GDDR3 is aligned in 32 rows of 16Mbit chips, enabling high-speed 256MB and 512MB Megabyte graphics cards, a Samsung press release stated. The increased memory speeds will help high-end graphics cards produce faster animation and richer graphic textures.
According to a report from Merrill Lynch, Samsung’s non-commodity DRAM business will account for more than 50% of its total DRAM revenues over the next two years, which will help Samsung enjoy a 10-20% price premium over its competitors.
Infineon Technologies recently announced that its 512Mbit GDDR3 DRAM was selected by ATI for the graphics chip maker’s Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics processor for notebook PCs.
The 512Mbit and 256Mbit GDDR3 DRAMs offered by Infineon are organized in 16Mbitx32 and 8Mbitx32 configurations, allowing for notebook graphics that balance the frame buffer and bus width. Infineon also claims that its trench technology offers significantly less power consumption than other DRAM at a given performance level, helping to conserve battery power.
Hynix Semiconductor, on the other hand, announced the availability of its 512Mbit GDDR4 DRAM for graphics applications on December 2. Hynix will soon begin to sample its GDDR4 products to leading graphic chipset suppliers and the company plans to start mass production in early 2006. The company claims that its memory is ideal for 64-bit computer operating systems that manage vast amounts of data at once.
According to Mercury Research, the market for high-end graphics memory is expected to grow 42% to US$1.5 billion in 2006, up from US$1.1 billion this year. |
