DIMMs Do More DRAM

Oct. 9, 2008

DRAM chip density continues to climb. But the hunger for more memory seems insatiable, especially with virtual systems running on multicore processors. One way to get more memory in a system is to support more memory sockets, though this requires

William G. Wong

DRAM chip density continues to climb. But the hunger for more memory seems insatiable, especially with virtual systems running on multicore processors. One way to get more memory in a system is to support more memory sockets, though this requires more motherboard space and more drivers. Another is to use higher-density chips, yet this can be more costly.

MetaRAM puts a DDR3 cont rol ler between the memory socket and memor y chips (see the figure). This allows a reduction of memory loads because the controller presents one load while handling multiple SDRAM chips. It also permits the creation of higher-density dualinline memory modules (DIMMs) using lowerdensity memory chips.

And, it’s possible to build a bigger DIMM, essentially doubling the capacity, using existing memory chips. The approach is applicable regardless of the memory chip capacity. Using higher-density chips simply increases the capacity of the resulting DIMM. The controllers support x4 and x8 DIMM interfaces.

MetaRAM • www.metaram.com

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William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

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I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

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