DDR3 Finally Arrives

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Transcend's launch of DDR3 modules early this month signals the arrival of DDR3 - the much awaited next generation memory standard.

Memory module manufacturer Transcend's launch of DDR3 modules early this month signals the arrival of DDR3 - the much awaited next generation memory standard. The new memory modules operate at a frequency of 1067 MHz and support Intel's high performance desktop platforms.

Touted as a successor to DDR2, the new memory standard was expecting a commercial launch by late 2006 but was delayed by more than a year due to slow DDR2 ramp up. Along with bringing dual-core processor performance to the market, Intel has already begun bundling DDR3 on its chipsets but will continue to coexist with DDR2 for at least another year. Rival AMD's road map on the other hand seems to suggest DDR3 adoption only by early 2008.

Better than DDR2:

DDR3 architecture is considerably better than its predecessor especially in the area of power consumption. With the shift from 110 nm process for DDR2 to 90nm fabrication process, DDR3 offers power consumption reduction of up to 40 per

cent. Less voltage consumption - 1.5V compared to DDR2's 1.8V - implies less heat dissipation and therefore longer battery life. With the automatic self refresh feature, it promises to maintain data integrity without consuming much power.

The new standard features 8-bit pre-fetch width, which is twice that of DDR2's 4-bit pre-fetch, which simply means lesser response time. DDR3 offers a higher bandwidth rate of 4Gbps as opposed to 2Gbps for DDR2. This means that more data can be exchanged at a faster rate. DDR3 technology comes with 15-20 percent-reduced read latency compared to DDR2, which amounts to lesser time lag. DDR3 also boasts of higher frequency range, while the DDR2 has a range of 400 to 1066 MHz, DDR3 can operate in the range of 800 to 1600 MHz range.

It comes equipped with dual gate transistors - a first in DRAM technology, which allows current leakage to be suppressed. With greater memory capacity of 1GB compared to the 512MB capacity of DDR2, it is especia