Intel and ITRI to research next-gen memory technologies

The first project under the collaboration is focused on the future of memory technologies used in computing devices such as ultrabooks, laptops, tablets, and handhelds. By creating memories with much greater energy efficiency, these mobile devices will be better equipped to handle the data-intensive applications of the future. The new dynamic random access memory (DRAM) to be jointly developed by Intel and ITRI is expected to offer lower latencies and clock-speeds, which will increase overall performance of memory compared to that of central processing units and thus close the so-called memory gap.

While the microprocessor performance increased at the rate of roughly 50% per year, the speed of DRAM memory improved at a rate of only 7% per year. Processor architecture began to advance on several fronts to compensate for the growing gap. Advances on one front attempted to reduce the memory access latency via caching. Caching is a very effective scheme to bring down the average memory access latency because memory access patterns exhibit spatial and temporal localities. Most of the time, an access to data or instruction hits the cache and results in a very short delay only.