by Anton Shilov
02/20/2007 | 03:51 PM
Nvidia Corp., the No. 1 supplier of discrete graphics processing units globally, is looking for an engineer experienced in embedded dynamic random access memory (eDRAM) implementation for an array of new products, which may be an indicator that the company’s plans involve usage of the technology for a variety of devices.
<%BANNER[article]%>The responsibilities of the engineer that Nvidia wants to higher include transistor level circuit design for graphics processors and other ASICs targeted at desktop, laptop, workstation, set-top box, wireless and home networking markets, meaning that Nvidia is looking towards using eDRAM technology in a number of applications.
eDRAM allows to integrate much higher amount of memory into computer chips than static random access memory (SRAM) used today for caches in processors. Larger amounts of onboard memory mean higher bandwidth, which would allow to use processing power of modern central processing or graphics processing units more efficiently.
Modern game consoles, such as Microsoft Xbox 360 as well as Sony PlayStation 2 make use of eDRAM technology, whereas Nintendo Gamecube and Wii use 1T-SRAM (which is a type of eDRAM developed by MoSys) for similar purpose of maximizing bandwidth, while IBM is planning to use eDRAM as cache for its microprocessors.
It is yet unclear whether Nvidia needs additional engineer specialized in eDRAM for a custom project, e.g., a game console graphics processor, or the company plans to use eDRAM for all of its bandwidth-starving products, including chips for standalone graphics cards and core-logic sets for mainboards.