Direct RDRAM Has 1.6-GB/s Bandwidth

Toshiba's 72-Mbit Direct Rambus DRAMs are said to be the industry's first with a confirmed 800-MHz or 1.6-Gbyte/s bandwidth. In Rambus Inc.'s initial evaluations of the memory devices, it was shown that the DRAMs completed and met functional tests, including pipelined read/write operations at speed, initialization procedures, and power management operations.The parts are organized as 4 Mwords x 18 bits with a 1-kbyte page size. They operate from 2.5V and consume 2.2W in operation and 260 mW in standby. Sampling is scheduled for September; mass production begins in Q1 of 1999.