Rambus, a leading memory and interface technology company, said recently that shipments of XDR memory it developed had reached 50 million units. Even though this is a respectable amount, the latest progress of Sony PlayStation 3 video game system on the market indicates that the game console is still the main consumer of XDR output.

Every Sony PlayStation 3 game machine features four 512Mb XDR memory chips or 256MB of XDR memory in total. According to Vgchartz.com market tracker, so far Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. has sold through 11.41 million PS3 systems, which means that even more have been made so far. Therefore, no less than 45.64 million of Rambus XDR memory chips were installed into PlayStation 3 consoles and less than five million were utilized in other applications.

Rambus has pinning a lot of hopes on its XDR memory since the introduction back in early 2005. In particular, the technology company said that its XDR was memory of choice for a wide variety of applications, namely high-definition TVs, high-definition video players, network equipment as well as other products that require high memory bandwidth amid low pin-count. Moreover, once Rambus even indicated that its XDR might allow it to jump back into the market of personal computers due to higher memory bandwidth requirements of multi-core microprocessors and advanced graphics processors.

In fact, numerous leading consumer electronics companies, such as Panasonic, Sony and Toshiba said they would adopt Rambus’ XDR memory for their devices, however, no commercially available product use XDR memory apart from PlayStation 3.

“The XDR memory architecture is an ideal solution for advanced consumer and computing applications,” said Sharon Holt, senior vice president of worldwide sales, licensing and marketing at Rambus. “Our complete XDR memory solution and comprehensive engineering services minimize risk and help our customers bring breakthrough products to market.”

XDR DRAM can operate at 3.20GHz to 6.40GHz clock-speeds, providing industry leading bandwidth per pin, which is a benefit for networking and consumer applications. The XDR memory architecture features a number of advanced technologies built on patented Rambus innovations that include low-voltage, low-power differential Rambus signaling level (DRSL), octal data rate (ODR) technology that transfers eight bits of data each clock cycle, FlexPhase circuit technology for precise on-chip alignment of data with clock and dynamic-point-to-point (DPP) for both enhanced signal integrity and scalability.