There has been quite some turbulence about IBM and Sony’s coming Cell-processor the last couple of days and we recently found out that Samsung has acknowledged it has started to massproduce XDR DRAM chip.
XDR DRAM is namely the powerful memory that will be used by Sony’s PlayStation 3-console and thus the Cell-processor.
XDR DRAM has been developed by Rambus Inc. and the last time we saw something from RAMBUS was during a shorter timespan on the PC-market in partners with Intel.
Now RAMBUS has decided to aim for markets that can really utilize the the XDR DRAM technology’s bandwidth, and one possible utilizer would be the Cell-processor.
And bandwidth there’s loads of. The 256-Mbit chip that now is being produced has the capacity to move data at 12.8 GB/s. They plan on introducing a 512MB XDR DRAM during the first 6 months of 2005.
Exactly what model of XDR DRAM that Sony PlayStation 3 will use remains to see, but since PS3 is about a year into the future away we will probably see some more news later on.
Another rumor that doesn’t seem to be based on any specific facts is that the Cell-processor will work at 4.6GHz. Primarily this sounds like a very high frequency despite the fact that the launch is about a year into the future. Whether these figures are accurate or not remains to see.
