Rambus licenses XDR DRAM to Qimonda

By Suzanne Deffree -- Electronic News, 1/3/2007

Rambus Inc. has signed a licensing agreement with Qimonda AG that will see its XDR memory interface solution be implemented in Qimonda's 75nm process technology for integration into high-volume applications, including game consoles, digital televisions, set-top boxes and PC graphics.

"The XDR memory solution completes our broad graphics RAM portfolio to better serve high-performance and high-bandwidth applications for the fast growing global computing and consumer electronics markets," said Robert Feurle, VP and general manager of graphics DRAM at Qimonda, in a statement.

Rambus XDR DRAM is based on a single, 2Byte-wide, 3.2GHz XDR DRAM component that provides 6.4GBytes/sec. of peak bandwidth. XDR memory first appeared in Sony’s Playstation 3 through an agreement Rambus inked with IBM for use of XDR in the Cell BE. Toshiba, Matsushita and AMD are also among the companies that use XDR.

The XDR DRAM memory architecture also includes Differential Rambus Signaling Level (DRSL), a low-voltage, low-power, differential signaling standard that allows scalable multi-GHz, bi-directional, and point-to-point data busses that connect an XDR memory controller to XDR DRAM devices; Octal Data Rate (ODR), a technology that transfers eight bits of data on each clock cycle, four times as many as DDR clocking; FlexPhase, a circuit technology that allows flexible phase relationships between signals; and Dynamic-Point-to-Point (DPP), which maintains the signal integrity benefits of point-to-point signaling on the data bus. 

Rambus did not release the financial details or length of its agreement with Qimonda.