Solid-state disk provider Samsung announced Feb. 2 that it has successfully completed customer evaluations of the industry’s first 30-nanometer-class DRAM in 2G-bit densities, and that the results bode well for the technology’s potential to help in saving electricity and the environment.
The Korean company’s 30nm-class 2Gb, Green DRAM reduces power consumption by about 30 percent over 50nm-class DRAM [dynamic RAM], Samsung said.
A 4GB, 30nm module when used in a new-generation notebook will consume only three watts per hour — only about three percent of the total power usage of a notebook, the company said.
The new DDR3[double data rate 3] will be used in a wide range of products, from servers to notebooks, desktops, and future versions of netbooks and mobile devices, Samsung said.
The 30nm-class DDR3 is scheduled for mass production in the second half of this year.
Samsung also said that the 30-nm-class process when applied to DDR3 mass production raises productivity by 60 percent over 40-nm-class DDR3. It also is twice as cost-efficient as “DRAM produced using 50-nm to 60-nm-class technology,” the company said.
DRAM, commonly used in servers of all types for boot-up and other purposes, stores each bit of data in a separate capacitor within an integrated circuit. Since real capacitors leak charge, the information eventually fades unless the capacitor charge is refreshed periodically.
Because of this refresh requirement, DRAM is considered dynamic memory as opposed to SRAM (static RAM). DRAM is used in a number of consumer and enterprise devices.