August 13, 2007 -- Innovative Silicon, Inc. (ISi) and Hynix Semiconductor, Inc. today announced that Hynix has agreed to license ISi's Z-RAM for use in its DRAM chips. Z-RAM-based DRAMs will use a single transistor bitcell, rather than a combination of transistors and capacitor elements. Hynix has received the first-mover opportunity to bring Z-RAM to the DRAM market; and to ensure this advantage, the two companies have committed considerable engineering resources to work side-by-side on the program.
Z-RAM was initially developed as a low-cost embedded memory technology for logic-based ICs such as mobile chipsets, microprocessors, networking and other consumer applications. The technology was first licensed, in December 2005, by AMD for upcoming microprocessor designs.
"Z-RAM promises to provide an elegant approach to manufacture dense DRAMs on nanometer processes," said Sung-Joo Hong, VP of R&D Division at Hynix. "We see the potential to create a new platform of products based on ISi's innovation of Z-RAM that will help us maintain and grow our leadership position in the memory market."
ISi's Z-RAM stands apart from today's standard DRAM and SRAM solutions as its single transistor (1T) bitcell architecture is the smallest memory cell, making it the highest density, and, therefore, lowest-cost semiconductor memory solution. Z-RAM's one transistor memory bitcell is made possible by harnessing the Floating Body Effect (FBE) found in circuits fabricated using SOI (silicon-on-insulator) wafers. Moreover, since Z-RAM takes advantage of a naturally-occurring SOI effect, Z-RAM does not require exotic process changes to build capacitors or other complex structures within the memory bitcell.
Go to the Innovative Silicon, Inc. website to find additional information.
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