Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest maker of dynamic random access memory, said Thursday it had made the world’s first 512Mb memory chip which complies to next-generation GDDR3 standard and can operate at the speed on 1066MHz. The company says the new memory type may reach commercial production as early as in 2006.

“Our success here with DDR3 continues our relentless push to bring the most advanced memory devices to the market at the fastest possible pace,” said Tom Quinn, senior vice president, memory sales and marketing, Samsung Semiconductor.

Samsung’s 512Mb DDR3 prototype operates at 1.5V and transfers data at the speed of 1066Mbps. Samsung says DDR3 memory will be made using 80nm process technology; at present the company uses 90nm for DDR and DDR2 SDRAM production.

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In addition to micro-architectural advantages DDR2 memory brings over the original DDR memory, such as, On-Die Termination (ODT) as well as larger 4-bit prefetch, additive latency, and enhanced registers, the DDR3 features self-driver calibration and data synchronization.

Samsung cites market research firm IDC as saying that the first DDR3 DRAMs will be sold in 2006 and that the DDR3 will represent 65% of the entire DRAM market in 2009. At the same time, Intel Corp.’s initial plans included platforms supporting DDR3 memory in 2007.

Samsung Electronics was the first to produce a DDR DRAM and DDR2 DRAM in 1998 and 2001 respectively.