Infineon presents DDR2 FB-DIMM modules at IDF

At the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco today, Infineon announced that it is sampling the industry's only DDR2 Fully Buffered Dual-In-line Memory Modules (FB-DIMMs) with all key components designed and manufactured by a single DRAM supplier. Available in densities ranging from 512MB to 4GB, the new FB-DIMMs are based on an Advanced Memory Buffer (AMB) chip, DDR2 DRAM chips and a proprietary heat sink all sourced from Infineon. Additionally, Infineon offers the AMB logic chip to other FB-DIMM manufacturers and has already shipped samples to first customers.

"Optimal production of the new modules requires innovation in three areas: high-density and high-speed DDR2 DRAM, the AMB chip, and heat sink to manage thermal load resulting from the combination of high memory density and the high-speed AMB chip," said Michael Buckermann, Head of the Business Unit Computing of Infineon's Memory Products Group. "Infineon's full control of component and module production provides server manufacturers with a mature quality product and enables a smooth implementation of optimally aligned FB-DIMMs, as the technology is adopted to begin replacing Registered DIMMs in high-end server systems from 2006 onwards."

FB-DIMMs change the parallel architecture of today's Registered DIMMs into a serial point-to-point connection. This eliminates the throughput bottleneck of increased densities and speed grades of next-generation server memory. The Infineon designed and produced AMB, a highly complex logic chip controlling this point-to-point connection, offers a data rate of 4.8 Gbps as a high-speed link interfacing directly with the DDR2 DRAMs, which have speed grades of up to 800MHz for this first generation. In addition to using it for its own modules,

Infineon also delivers the AMB chip to other FB-DIMM manufacturers, boosting market penetration of the next generation server memory.

As a pioneer in FB-DIMM development, Infineon introduced the industry's first AMB test chip in August 2004, and successfully demonstrated system boot-up on DDR2 platforms during IDF in February 2005. The current FB-DIMM generation announced today will use DDR2 DRAMs with speed grades of 533 and 667MHz, which will later be extended to 800MHz.

According to a recent report of market research firm iSuppli the 16 percent share of 4.2 million FB-DIMMs for the OEM server market in 2006 is expected to increase to 79 percent by 2008.

Customer samples of FB-DIMMs with densities of 512MB, 1GB, 2GB and 4GB based on 512Mbit and 1Gbit DDR2 533 and DDR2 667 components are available now. Volume production is planned for the fourth quarter of calendar year 2005.

The Infineon AMB chip with a data rate of up to 4.8 Gbps is offered in a 665-ball, high performance flip-chip BGA package. It is also available now in sample quantities.