Samsung Develops Fully-Buffered DIMM


Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the leader in advanced semiconductor technology, on Nov. 25 announced the next-generation memory module, a 1GB Fully Buffered, Dual In-line Memory Module (FB DIMM) based on DDR2 technology.
FB DIMM, a new design that resolves the limited memory performance of conventional registered DIMMs, will sharply boost memory density and bandwidth to improve data processing in servers and workstations.
"Samsung has been part of an industry-wide effort to address the demand for higher system performance," said Jon Kang, senior vice president, technical marketing, Samsung Semiconductor. "We believe that our FB DIMM solution will be adopted by the rest of the memory market and become the most widely used."
"Emerging FB-DIMM products, such as this first offering from Samsung, will deliver the high-performance memory required to balance the platform and enable the promise of tomorrow's high-speed server applications." said Jim Pappas, director of initiative marketing for Intel's Enterprise Platforms Group.
Currently, the memory slot access rate per channel decreases as the memory bus speed increases, resulting in limited density build-up as channel speeds increase.
The FB DIMM eliminates this "stub-bus" channel bottleneck by using point-to-point links that enable multiple memory modules to be connected serially to a given channel.
A memory buffer chip is added to each module to enable the use of high and low speed interfaces. The buffer can generate speeds of 3.2Gbps to 4.8Gbps, six-times that of the DRAM.
Samsung will begin mass production of FB-DIMMs in the first half of 2005 to meet early market demands for the cutting-edge technology. nw