Santa Clara (CA) and Icheon (Korea) - Innovative Silicon (ISi) announced that it has licensed its Z-RAM technology to Hynix Semiconductor, shedding some light on a new system memory technology that could be available by 2010. The eight-figure deal ushers in the first major manufacturing change seen in the DRAM industry since CMOS.

ISi said it will work very closely with Hynix over the next two years to develop high-volume, commercial ready memory products that are compatible with today's DRAM memory sockets. The R&D will be carried out by ISi in Lausanne, Switzerland and Santa Clara, California, as well as the Hynix' labs in Korea. No definite schedule was given as to when commercial products will be available. Jeff Lewis, vice president of marketing at ISi, and Mark-Eric Jones, ISi's CEO, both indicated that the ramp-up time from license to product is generally about three years. Jones also told us they also have “good confirmation their memory technology is of interest to the DRAM industry” overall. Hynix had been evaluating Z-RAM closely for about a year before licensing, we're told.

ISi explained that Z-RAM's advantages over traditional DRAM are its use of capacitor-less “bitcell” configuration. It's nearly twice as dense as DRAM and about 5x as dense as SRAM. Compared to DRAM, it is promised to be faster and to consume about the same amount of power while having a smaller footprint. ISi's design also allows for optimizations geared toward speed or power efficiencies. Lewis noted that ISi is currently running the memory at operational frequencies of around 500 MHz. While this is notably slower than most SRAM applications today, the advantages are the same die space could hold up to 5x the amount of cache.

Z-RAM requires fewer tools and manufacturing process steps to create memory devices compared to traditional capacitor-based DRAM production, we were told. This could indicate faster processing times and less chances to introduce errors. Z-RAM only works on Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) process technologies due to SOI's “floating body effect”: Whereas SOI isn't generally used today, the switch could be made for Z-RAM without issue.

ISi said it holds "at least" 25 patents related to the bitcell, support circuitry and interface architectures, with about 50 more pending. Z-RAM is currently on a Gen2 iteration with validation at the 45 nm process node. Gen2 offers significantly greater power savings over Gen1, specifically on write processes. It is also faster and can hold a bit charge 25x longer than Gen1. ISi is targeting DRAM, microprocessors and SoC products for future licensing.

Hynix joins AMD as Z-RAM licensee. AMD licensed ISi's initial Gen1 product in January, 2006. They later renewed their license with Gen2 in December of the same year. It is believed AMD will use Z-RAM for a large, embedded L3 cache in future microprocessors, though no products have been announced so far.

If it costs less to make

Aug 13, 2007 07:31     

If it is easier to make, it would costs less to make; therefore, the price to consumers will be less. It could mean one could afford to have more memory for ones computers which means faster computers. :)
TomLeeM/BigWarpGuy report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

advantages ?

Aug 13, 2007 08:36     

5x capacity on the same size AND capacitor-less technology would allow manufacturer to include the ram onboard, for what i know, 500mhz. as far as i know, SOI process would allow lower latencies, i hope 500mhz CL 2 is achievable, with actual speeds being 500mhz, in 2010, this should get up to 1ghz at CL2 while onboard or theorically used on a CPU die, this could be 16-32 mb cache for future AMD graphic on-chip solution

Da Tronics report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

RE: it costs less to make

Aug 13, 2007 10:39     

Dont forget they need to pay for current and future R&D, so dont expect prices for consumers to be low.
borandi report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

AMD's Fusion Z-Ram

Aug 13, 2007 12:15     

That's what I see in the future.. Since 2006 when AMD started talking about Z-Ram the talks of the Fusion appeared I'm wondering that this new structure with L3 is meant for Fusion and/or shared memory for it.
Wateva report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Faster, lower power, denser, cheaper, really?

Aug 14, 2007 10:38     

It sounds like the next best thing since sliced bread. I'm shocked that anything that is cheaper, denser, simpler to manufacture and uses less power that Micron, Samsung, Infineon, Elpida, and others aren't beating a path to Z-ram. Basically 85% of the DRAM manufactures aren't interested. DRAM has been a bloody market this year. Anyone that could offer just few percentage improvement in any area would make hundreds of millions by seperating them from the commodity horse race. Sorry, I seriously doubt Hynix or AMD has anything but a few less dollars in their bank account.

lex report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -1

Re: Faster, lower power, denser, cheaper, really?

Aug 14, 2007 10:43     

-Sorry, I seriously doubt Hynix or AMD has anything -but a few less dollars in their bank account. lex, I asked ISi reps this exact question. I said that with all of these promises, why hasn't every memory maker jumped on board? Does it work? Or is it a house of cards. They told me it does work and the Hynix agreement is additional proof which, after a whole year of research and investments in time and effort toward exploring the possibility, demonstrates that it is viable. The only thing which has concerned me to date is that Z-RAM has no actual products which are scaled to full-size 64 Mbit chips or larger, for example. They only have small array test chips which are little more than proofs of concept as they are completely unusable for anything commercial. However, they have only had a few million dollars to work with. Validating the technology down to the 45nm node is quite a thing on such a limited budget. Z-RAM products from AMD should be appearing in early 2009 if they are viable. Hynix will see them in late 2010 or after, if they pursue and push. We'll see.

Rick Hodgin report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1