Press Release
Contact:-
Aston Bridgman
NEC Corporation
TEL : 81-3-3798-6511
FAX : 81-3-3457-7249
E-mail : Aston_Bridgman@HO-PRD.ccgw.nec.co.jp
*****For immediate use November 18, 1997
NEC Dramatically Improves Computer Performance with New Memory TechnologyNEC Corporation (NEC) today unveiled Virtual Channel Memory (VCM), a memory core technology that enhances existing memory architectures to realize dramatic performance increases. On personal computers, workstations and servers, VCM is expected to double graphics performance and raise system performance by as much as 20%. VCM requires no design changes in memory input/output architectures, chip packaging or board design as an extremely cost-effective solution to memory performance limitations. The increasing demands of multimedia applications and rapid innovations in microprocessors, are putting ever stronger emphasis on the need for greater memory speeds. For this reason, NEC is already mass producing high-speed RambusTM and Synchronous DRAMs (dynamic random access memory), well ahead of other semiconductor manufacturers. These memory architectures offer interface innovations that have realized significant advances in data transfer speeds over previous architectures. But while innovations have significantly raised memory interface performance, memory core performance has remained relatively static. This has meant that memory latency, or the time spent waiting for a memory device to read its data or to write new data to its cells, together with its internal operation (pre-charge and refresh times) have hardly changed, spelling no performance gains in this area for the overall system. VCM Technology NEC's VCM technology takes an innovative approach to adding performance efficiencies in current memory cores, improving latency and throughput performance issues, by temporarily storing data in multiple channels between the input/output terminals and the memory cells. This new memory core technology allows the memory chip to prepare other memory data requests in a separate channel, while it is reading or writing the current data. The result is a significant increase in data transfer speeds. Importantly for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), VCM is an open technology, that does not require any board level changes, and supports existing,pinouts and packaging options. Only minimal circuit modifications in the core logic controller will be necessary. Overall, a less than five percent die size penalty in VCM-enhanced memory devices is expected. VCM is a technological advance with more of an impact on memory performance than even an outright doubling of frequency would have. Applications such as multimedia PCs, workstations, Internet servers, games, network devices will all see significant performance improvements with the introduction of VCM technology: as much as a doubling of graphics performance and an overall 20% increase in system performance. An Open Industry Standard NEC will begin authorizing use of the VCM technology to a number of memory vendors in early 1998, and as an open standard, NEC will not charge any licensing fees associated with VCM. Aiming for de facto industry standard status, VCM fully complements existing memory architectures, including: Extended Data Out DRAM (EDO), Synchronous DRAM (SDRAM), Double Data Rate SDRAM (DDR), Rambus DRAM (RDRAM), flash memory, mask ROM and many other memory architectures. Consequently, NEC expects to see more than half of all new memory products utilize VCM by the year 2000. First Virtual Channel Memory Device Developed As the first product to utilize VCM, NEC has developed a 64Mb (megabit) Virtual Channel SDRAM that the company expects to sample from April 1998. The main features of the VC-SDRAM are as follows:
NEC Corporation (NASDAQ: NIPNY) pioneered the concept of 'C&C', the integration of Computers and Communications, and is the only company in the world to be counted among top ranking corporations spanning the wide range of fields essential for this vision of multimedia: computers, communications and electron devices. Employing in excess of 150,000 people around the world, NEC saw net sales in fiscal year 1996-97 amount to 4,948 billion yen (approx. US$40 billion). For further information visit our home page at: http://www.nec-global.com For Outline of Main specifications of 64Mb Virtual Channel SDRAM, please see the attached sheet.
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