Samsung, Hyundai accelerate graphics RAM speeds

Samsung and Hyundai both announced high-speed SDRAM chips aimed at graphics card vendors, yesterday. Hyundai's 2Mb by 32-bit double data rate SRAM cleverly comes in 3dfx-friendly 143MHz, 166MHz and 183MHz clock speeds, neatly matching the clock rates of the card vendor's current Voodoo 3 line-up. The 0.22 micron chips are currently sampling, with volume production to follow next quarter. The parts will then ship at $15.50 per 1000; the current, sample price is $21. Hyundai claims it supplies a quarter of all the memory parts sold to graphics card vendors. Samsung is hoping to challenge that with its 266MHz 64Mb SDRAM part, which is fabbed at 0.17 micron. Samsung claims the technology can support the now-standard 128-bit graphics card bus, and pump up to 4GB per second through it. That amounts to a frame rate of 60fps, the company said, though of course achieving that in a game depends on the accelerator the memory's connected to and its ability to churn out and render those frames. ®