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Elpida Memory Inc., a Japanese supplier of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) together with Rambus Inc., a technology licensing company specializing in high-speed chip architectures, have introduced what they say is the industry's fastest DRAM. It is a 512 megabit, 4.8 GHz XDR DRAM, based on Rambus XDR memory architecture. This latest addition to the XDR DRAM family provides a data transfer rate of 9.6 GB/s, six times the peak bandwidth of industry-standard DDR2-800 memory devices. This makes it well suited for high-performance, high-volume applications.

The Elpida device, part number EDX5116ADSE-5E-E, is organized in 8-banks (x16/x8/x4 programmable) with a 9.6 GB/s data transfer rate. The 4.8 GHz XDR device is manufactured using Elpida's 70 nm process technology and is housed in a 104-ball FBGA package.

To support both high-speed and robust data transfer, XDR DRAM uses key enabling technologies that build upon Rambus innovations. These include differential Rambus signaling level (DRSL) that minimizes signal swing and noise, octal data rate (ODR) technology that transfers eight bits of data on each clock cycle to achieve 4.8 GHz operation with just a 600 MHz clock, and FlexPhase circuit technology for precise on-chip data alignment with the clock. The device also features adaptive impedance matching, dynamic request scheduling and zero overhead refresh.

The EDX5116ADSE-5E-E will become available for sampling in December. Volume production is expected to begin in April 2008.