Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest maker of memory, announced recently the next-generation memory module, a 1GB Fully Buffered, Dual In-line Memory Module (FB-DIMM) based on DDR2 technology. The firm confirmed mass production of the FB-DIMM to be initiated in the first half of 2005.

“Samsung has been part of an industry-wide effort to address the demand for higher system performance. We believe that our FB DIMM solution will be adopted by the rest of the memory market and become the most widely used,” said Jon Kang, senior vice president, technical marketing, Samsung Semiconductor.

FB DIMM, a new design that resolves the limited memory performance of conventional registered DIMMs, will sharply boost memory density and bandwidth to improve data processing in servers and workstations. Currently, the memory slot access rate per channel decreases as the memory bus speed increases, resulting in limited density build-up as channel speeds increase. The FB DIMM eliminates this “stub-bus” channel bottleneck by using point-to-point links that enable multiple memory modules to be connected serially to a given channel.

A memory buffer chip is added to each module to enable the use of high and low speed interfaces. The buffer can generate speeds of 3.2Gbps to 4.8Gbps, 6-times that of the DRAM.

Samsung will begin mass production of FB-DIMMs in the first half of 2005 to meet early market demands for the cutting-edge technology, Samsung said.