Elpida Memory, the No. 3 DRAM maker in the world, said it had completed development of the industry's first 25nm process 4Gb DDR3 SDRAM, the smallest 4Gb memory chip, according to Elpida. The company believes that the new development will help it to boost profit margins that have been falling for some time now.

By using ultra-fine process technology the 4Gb DDR3 SDRAM becomes a more energy efficient chip and achieves higher productivity. As a 4Gb product, its density is double that of Elpida's 2Gb DDR3 SDRAM based on the same process node. The newly developed 4Gb DRAM enhances productivity by about 45% compared with Elpida's 30nm 4Gb DDR3 SDRAM. Compared with this same 30nm DDR3, it reduces operating current by about 25-30% and standby current by about 30-50%. It has also realized the industry's highest speed data transfer rate of 1866MT/s (1866MHz resulting clock-speed) with 1.35V or 1.5V voltage.

The new 25nm DDR3 SDRAM is expected to find applications in PCs and in servers used in data centers and other facilities that perform large-scale information processing tasks. Other applications are likely to include tablet PCs and thin ultrabook systems.

Sample shipment and mass production of the new 25nm 4 Gb DDR3 SDRAM is expected to start by the end of this year.

Tags: Elpida, DDR3, DRAM, 25nm