Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest maker of memory modules, demonstrated at Intel Developer Forum (IDF) its memory modules based on the DDR3 devices. The company confirmed that Intel Corp. would start transition to the next-generation memory in the second half of next year.

Dong-Yang Lee, a senior engineer in Samsung Electronics’ memory group, said during the forum that Samsung is ready to mass produce DDR3 as soon as in the second half of 2006, but Intel would support the new memory type in the second half of 2007. Mr. Lee indicated that DDR3 memory will be able to substitute DDR2 as a mainstream memory type in the Q1 2009.

Samsung’s DDR3 memory module. Photo by HKEPC web-site.

Samsung also demonstrated its PC3-6400 dual in-line memory module (DIMM) based on DDR3 chips that operate at 800MHz. Eventually, according to Samsung, DDR3 memory will be able to scale to 1066MHz, 1333MHz and even 1667MHz. The company said that the DDR3 devices will be manufactured using 70nm process technology, which should ensure their cost-efficiency even compared to DDR2.

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, data synchronization and other innovations in addition to increased.

Memory market research company iSuppli expected DDR3 DRAM products to replace their predecessor DDR2 as the main volume product in 2008. iSuppli forcasts a DDR3 market share of 55% the same year. IDC predicted that the first DDR3 memory will be commercially sold in 2006, whereas in 2009 market share of DDR3 will be 65%.