Samsung Reducing Mobile Memory Density

In a move that could lead to the integration of such features as inline linear editing on camcorders conceivably as soon as 2008, Samsung announced today it will begin mass production of a single-chip one-gigabit (1 Gbit) low-power double-data-rate (DDR) DRAM package, for use in mobile handsets and small digital camcorders, as soon as the second quarter of next year.

With production beginning soon, it’s very likely that Samsung will have some type of demonstration planned for the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, preliminary festivities for which begin just a week from Friday.

Perhaps the only news source this morning which dug deeper than Samsung’s press release is the Taiwanese electronics industry daily DigiTimes, which reports this morning that Samsung’s new single-die architecture will integrate a temperature sensor feature that will help reduce electric current by 30%. This is achieved by generating its own self-refreshing, location-sensitive signal, called temperature compensated self-refresh (TCSR), when the chip’s temperature exceeds a given point.

This technology is paired with a partial array self-refresh (PASR) that operates like an embedded cache, refreshing only those regions of memory that fall within a set of registers of recently addressed memory, rather than continuously recycling the entire package each and every time.

These two features will be embedded within a package that’s 20% thinner than Samsung’s current double-die 2x512 Mbit stack. With Samsung holding the patents, competitors such as Micron and Elpida may only be able to keep up if they don’t mind the license fees.

The “Gbit” in this case doesn’t refer to the memory capacity (as in "gigabyte"), but the memory density, which is typically measured in gigabits per square inch. Currently, Samsung produces a double-die package for handset and mobile device manufacturers whose 512 Mbit density had only been announced in January 2005, with production having commenced that November.

While competitors like Qimonda (the former memory division of Infineon) race to produce faster 512 Mbit packages to keep up – Qimonda’s DDR366 high-speed mobile DRAM at 512 Mbit was announced just last month – Samsung’s 1 Gbit move (based on technology it announced in March 2005) merely continues and extends the development race.

Already, the double-die package set forth a wave of new 3G phone designs, and the new single-die alternative is likely to produce yet another. But with digital video and still cameras needing on-board memory for inline applications (as opposed to mere storage, which is handled by flash memory), and with software engineers such as Khronos Group working to create the successor to OpenGL ES,

Samsung’s development could lead to applications such as linear video editing on the camera, complete with 3D transitions, titling, and audio, perhaps before the end of the decade.