RAM News - Page 30

CES 2013 - Corsair have announced the release of the Dominator Platinum Light Bar Upgrade Kits, which allow users to pimp their ride, or should I say RAM, with lighting for their Dominator Platinum DDR3 RAM.

Each of the Dominator Platinum Light Bar Upgrade Kits will include two light bars which will replace the existing bars that come stock on the memory, sporting translucent colored inserts which come in Cerulean Blue and Arctic White which will allow the user to customize the lighting color. The light bars are designed in a way that the new top openings radiate more light upwards.

The Upgrade Kits come with an installation tool which makes installing the kits an easy affair, taking just minutes to get your RAM looking beautiful. Corsair will be selling the Dominator Platinum Light Bar Upgrade Kits in February through selected resellers and distributors with a suggested retail price of $29.99 in the US.

Samsung have reportedly starting the mass production of what they consider the first 2GB LPDDR3 (low profile DDR) chip for mobile applications, just 10 months after the South Korean company started production on DDR2 memory.

Samsung have hit a milestone that sees the first time 2GB LPDDR3 density chips are made available as an all-in-one package, since they sport four LPDDR3 chips stacked together. Samsung says that LPDDR3 will be a requirement moving forward, as mobile devices ship with faster and faster processors, higher resolution displays, and 3D graphics. Samsung have also pointed toward the fact that LPDDR3 features a transfer rate of up to 1600Mbps per pin, which gives us transmission rates of up to 12.8GB/s at the package level - compared to LPDDR2 that maxed out at 1066Mbps, makes LPDDR3 parts around 50% faster.

LPDDR3 will usher in the ability of allowing real-time viewing of high-quality video, without having to download the content first. Samsung have also teased that the mass production of 128GB eMMC for mobile devices, which will see the new products being much faster than their predecessors, while offering the increased storage space. Samsung's 128GB eMMC products will sport NAND with a toggle DDR 2.0 interface, built on a 20nm manufacturing process.

Kingston, one of the world's largest memory manufacturers, produced a HyperX Red line as a limited edition product earlier this year. The HyperX Red line was designed to be a budget part, an offering to compete against "major on 3rd" products, which have dominated the budget market.

"Major on 3rd" means that a company has taken a major brand memory, such as Toshiba, and added it to a 3rd party vendor's PCB. This is where most of your budget memory comes from. Now, Kingston wants to take some of this market. That is why they have permanently added the HyperX Red product to their line up.

The HyperX Red brand is designed for system builders who want to use major brand memory or for enthusiasts who don't want to spend a lot of money on their RAM and still want to get some performance.

Computer sales have been slow, especially considering we are in the third quarter, a time when sales are usually peaking due to back to school shopping and other factors. This slow down in sales has caused a drop in demand for DRAM and quite the stock pile of RAM back at the factories. Most have pulled in production, but they still have a 3 month surplus.

Hopefully, Windows 8 PCs and the release of Windows 8 will drive PC sales back up to where they should be. This should help clear out the back up as sales pick up. Some sources have reported OEM PC factories have a surplus of 6 months. This huge pile up is bad for the industry but good for consumers looking to upgrade their RAM.

Some sources are saying that RAM prices could be 10-15 percent lower in October than they are today--good news if you need to expand your RAM offerings or are looking to give RAM as a gift. Elpida and Rexchip Electronics have cut production by 25-30 percent in order to stop prices from dipping even further.

Samsung have started mass production on a slew of new mobile flash memory chips that could give us nearly four times the speed of current chips. Samsung's Pro Class 1500 high-speed embedded memory will hit 'SSD-like' speeds in read/write operations in smart devices with capacities of 16, 32 and 64GB.

With smartphones already reaching 2GHz clock speeds running four cores, the CPU can't be the one to do all of the heavy lifting and continue to make the device feel fast. The job of system RAM is to keep an eye on all open programs, and if this part of the device is lacklustre, you'll feel it. Samsung have claimed that the new flash modules can reach speeds of up to 140MB/sec with write speeds hitting 50MB/sec at 1,500 IOPS writes and 3,500 IOPS reads.

Samsung seem to have leant on multiple technologies in order to reach these speeds, such as the 20nm manufacturing process, quick toggle DDR 2.0 memory that sports its own controller and a new JEDEC memory standard. At the moment there's no ETA when we should expect this tech to be baked into devices, but it shouldn't be too long.

Micron look to be the first manufacturer to bring phase-change memory (PCM) to the market, a flash-alternative. Micron have said that PCM will be first be baked into feature phones, with smartphones and tablets to arrive later.

Why feature phones, and not smartphones and tablets? Micron says they'll be stamping out a board with 1GB of PCM (45nm) accompanied by 512MB of LPDDR2 (mobile DDR). Smartphone and tablet users expect much more capacity, but with PCM still in its early days, this can't be done.

Micron seem to be taking a slow and steady approach, before working with higher densities and smaller packages. PCM is a type of non-volatile memory which appears to be best suited for applications where NAND flash is currently used. Most of you probably use something with NAND flash inside, USB flash drives, SSDs, memory cards, and most other commercial products where permanent data storage without a power source is required. PCM also does this.

DDR4 is coming, and it'll be here sometime in 2014. At the same time, we should expect GDDR6 to arrive, the memory that gets slapped onto our GPUs. But, first off, in order to enable the complete platform qualification made up from processor, motherboard, chipset, memory modules and more, Samsung have begun sampling the key industry vendors with DDR4 memory modules.

Enter the first DDR4 server module which arrive as "Registered Dual Inline Memory Module" sporting no less than 16GB (128 Gbit) of RAM. DDR4-2133 is what it should arrive as, and it brings quite the performance crown with it, providing 2.1 billion transfers per second. Power consumption has been reduced, by as much as 40-percent, with the operating voltage dropping from 1.35V to just 1.2V, with Amps remaining the same.

Samsung have said that the initial DIMMs will be made on a 30nm process node, but the shipping DIMMs should feature 20nm DDR4 DRAM. As soon as 20nm hits, Samsung should be able to offer 8GB, 16GB and 32GB DDR4 modules. This should mean that Intel's Haswell-EP and Haswell-EX platforms should support 256GB of memory per CPU, or 1TB on a single quad-socket motherboard. Impressive, isn't it?

GDDR5 is what companies use if they want to provide a high performance graphics solution. It's the best solution for a lot of different uses and can be found in systems from graphics cards to networking switches, from cars to rockets and even lunar landers. But, when is the next generation going to arrive?

Well, that would appear to be in 2014, if things continue as they are. Let's take a step back and look at the origins of GDDR. AMD was the company behind the creation of the GDDR standard. They did some great stuff with GDDR3 and GDDR5, but GDDR4 really wasn't on the market long enough to gain any sort of foothold.

GDDR6 is being designed to last until at least 2020. It is being built with numerous changes and they are really focusing on the silicon used in the memory. The part is expected to outlast GDDR3 which still makes up the majority of GDDR shipments. AMD is working hard to get the standard certified. There are a lot of interested companies such as NVIDIA and Intel, but without AMD we wouldn't have the GDDR standard we have come to love.

Kingston was at ShowStoppers, an event that runs at the same time as E3, demoing their RAM and the fact that 64GB is needed and, in some instances, not enough. They were running an Adobe program on a 2011 Intel platform with all 8 slots loaded with 8GB sticks of HyperX RAM. CPU usage was around 12%, while RAM usage was at 94% when I grabbed a picture.

The real news from Kingston, however, was the launching of their new RAM to compliment the Ivy Bridge platform. Kingston is now shipping dual-channel RAM kits specifically designed for the third-generation Core line of products. Kingston HyperX memory is available in 16GB and 8GB kits of two at 1600MHz, 2133MHz, 2400MHz and soon to be speedy 2666MHz frequencies.

"The new 22nm architecture of this processor allows significant performance gains for benchmarkers, enthusiasts and overclockers," said Mark Tekunoff, senior technology manager, Kingston. "Enthusiasts who want to push the performance boundaries of the new processors will want to pair it with Kingston HyperX memory. Our 2666MHz kit combined with the top CPU in the Ivy Bridge family will allow unparalleled performance."

Computex 2012 - Walking through these halls in Nangang is crazy, there is almost too much to see, which is sometimes overwhelming. Then you meet some great guys over at the GeIL booth and they walk you through some of their gear. GEiL are just one division of a three-part company. GEiL covers the memory/storage side of things, Epic Gear covers peripherals such as keyboards, mice and mouse mats, then finally we have power supplies covered by Thortech.

First up we have shots of the Meduza mouse from Epic Gear, which felt great in my hand. The mouse mat under it has 8 layers and can flex back on itself and is an absolute joy to use. I noticed it felt smoother than most other mice I've used at Computex and asked the guy if the monitor was a 120Hz screen, which it was. Nice to see GEiL using a super-smooth 120Hz screen to their advantage with a smooth mouse and mouse mat combo.

The Meduza sports dual-sensors, one optical, one lazer for precision. This is great for those who switch between first-person shooters and MMOs, there is a toggle for 'optical', 'host', and 'laser'. Another surprise was their Compoxite mouse mat which is completely water-proof. This is great for those gamer rage sessions where you might accidentally spill a drink across your mouse mat.