Samsung Ready to Make DDR2

South Korean-based Samsung Monday said its semiconductor division has begun mass production of the industry’s first 1GigaByte DDR2 Dual in-Line Memory Module (DIMM) .

The company said its new memory chips are JEDEC standard compliant and feature a 4-bit pre-fetch, which is twice the external bandwidth of regular DDR for the same internal frequency. The 1.8-volt device features a high-speed data transfer rate of 533Mbps that can be extended to 667Mbps for networks and special system environments.

Samsung said its San Jose, Calif.-based offices first shipped engineering samples of a 512Mb DDR2 SDRAM to major chipset developers last May.

The company’s said its DDR2 offering also has off-chip driver calibration to maintain driver strength; on-die termination to ensure optimum signal waveform; and posted CAS, a command control method to enhance bus efficiency.

“DDR2 is a viable technology and will play an important role in enabling the development of a new generation of feature-rich, high-speed gaming PCs, servers and network computers,” said Samsung US Vice President of Memory Sales and Marketing Tom Quinn.

Last week rival Micron Technology announced it had made the industry’s first 4Gbyte DDR registered dual in-line DIMM. The module uses Micron’s 1Gbit DDR266 SDRAM chip in standard TSOP packaging. The company is manufacturing the 1Gb DDR SDRAM on 0.11 micron process technology using stacked capacitors,

The two companies are in the middle of a bitter dispute that alleges Samsung and other Korean memory makers received “special” treatment in the form of government subsidies. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is still debating the case.

The DDR2 battle is expected to heat up relatively soon. Mass production for the next-generation DDR2 SDRAM may be pushed back to 2005, a year later than they originally expected by chipmakers and analysts.