Infineon Establishes Supplies Of GDDR3 Memory
Infineon Technologies AG recently established supplies of GDDR3 SDRAM used on high-end and performance-mainstream graphics cards.
Source: X-Bit LabsThe move may pose competition to Samsung Electronics, who has been the primary supplier of GDDR3 memory for the two leading graphics chips designers – ATI Technologies Inc. and NVIDIA Corp. – as well as their partners for the last one and a half years.
Galaxy Technology, a graphics cards maker, recently started to sell its NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT-based graphics cards equipped with 2.0ns memory from Infineon Technologies AG. The boards does not feature any differences compared to those produced based on the GeForce 6600 GT graphics processors by the company except of memory chips that come from Infineon.
GDDR3 evolves from DDR2, but still has some pretty important differences. Firstly, GDDR3 makes use of a single-ended, unidirectional strobe that separates the reads and writes. DDR2, by contrast, uses differential bi-directional strobes. Secondly, GDDR3 utilises a “pseudo-open drain” interface technique that is based on voltage rather than current. This was done so that graphics chips can be compatible with DDR, DDR2 and GDDR3. Like DDR2, GDDR3 interface uses 1.8-Volt SSTL. Such memory is better suited to point-to-point links used on graphics cards and allows GPU developers to reach the new performance and feature heights with their products.
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