19 August 2002 -- Agere Systems Inc and Samsung Semiconductor Inc - a US subsidiary of Korean memory chip manufacturer Samsung Electronics Co Ltd - have agreed to collaborate on the development of high-speed Network-DRAM memory devices which will provide network design engineers with a cost-effective solution for relieving data traffic bottlenecks in next-generation networks.
Samsung's Network-DRAMs are tailored for broadband networking applications such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet and OC-192 SONET, which require fast, random data access. The technology will be used with Agere's PayloadPlus family of programmable network processors for deep packet processing in high-speed networks. Target customers include original equipment manufacturers (OEM) of high-capacity network and telecoms systems.
"Network-DRAM reduces latency and bus turnaround time, which are key to achieving fast random access time," said Tom Quinn, Samsung Semiconductor Inc's vice president of marketing. The next generation will target 400MHz double data rate (800Mbit/s) effective performance, he adds.
"The advent of memory technologies such as Network-DRAM gives system OEMs the advanced tools necessary to architect solutions that can take advantage of ever-increasing processing power and bandwidth," said Gartner semiconductor memory analyst Richard Gordon.
Network-DRAM is fully compatible with fast cycle random access memory (FCRAM), the high-speed networking memory technology jointly developed by Fujitsu and Toshiba. Samsung is currently mass-producing 256Mb Network-DRAMs. Agere recently announced similar agreements with Fujitsu and Toshiba.