– Expands memory options for high performance PCs, Network PCs, PDAs, and Color Printers
– Cooperative effort among leading semiconductor memory chip makers
HEI(President: Kim Young Hwan) today announced that it has signed an agreement with NEC Corporation (NEC) and its subsidiary, NEC Electronics Inc., to jointly promote the widespread use of the Virtual Channel Memory (VCM) technology. VCM is a memory core technology designed to greatly improve the performance of personal computers, workstations and other systems. Under the accord, HEI and NEC will announce plans for joint development, production, and marketing of this high performance SDRAM memory standard. Work on exchanging technologies will begin this month. This development takes VCM another major step toward becoming the de facto memory core technology standard. Already accepted by the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC)* as a standard for memory designs, and supported by ARM, Siemens, ALi, SiS and VIA. HEI and NEC are very excited about the potential market for this advanced VCM technology DRAM. Current testing of HEI’s VCM engineering samples show that they can improve performance of systems by more than 30 percent over PC-100 memories now in use. Also, with the leading 3-4 chipset makers supporting VCM technology, the future of the VCM market looks positive. Such agreements are considered key to introducing devices based on new technologies to the marketplace and guaranteeing supply. Virtual Channel SDRAMs can quickly accelerate the rate at which they can send and receive data, and therefore, better accommodate increasing demands from multimedia applications, as well as increased performance of microprocessors. HEI is pursuing VCM technology in parallel with other emerging high-performance core memory technologies such as DDR SDRAMs and RambusR DRAMs. Just last month, HEI announced it’s entry into the RambusR DRAM marketplace further positioning itself as a global supplier of a full spectrum of advanced memory to the world market. The new VCM product improves the performance of systems by 20 – 30 percent by storing data temporarily in the chip for intensive data processing applications. In addition, it reduces power consumption by 30 percent through modern packaging and high-speed capabilities. The VCM memory SDRAM uses current controllers, so it is compatible with PC systems, PDAs, and color printers in use today. Moreover, these VCM SDRAMs can be manufactured on existing SDRAM fab lines, significantly reducing the overall capital equipment investment and process change requirements. A spokesperson from HEI commented, ” The strategic alliance for technical collaboration in the memory semiconductor field is meaningful in that the two firms are moving forward collectively to support a common market demand for high performance memory”. A spokesperson from NEC remarked, ” The meaning of this alliance is expected to contribute a great deal to both firms in the long-run by combining the strengths of both firms. In addition, this alliance will benefit the customers with higher performance, high quality, and cost competitive upper-end memory products”.
