Micron launches low-power SDRAM

Dinna, dinna, dinna, dinna, dinna... BAT-RAM

By Tony Smith • Get more from this author

Posted in Channel, 12th February 2001 17:34 GMT

Free research: Application platforms, the state of play

Micron has announced a version of SDRAM technology aimed at mobile applications - even as fellow chip maker Infineon was doing exactly the same thing (see Infineon unveils PDA SDRAM).

Micron's answer to Infineon's Mobile-RAM is called BAT-RAM, but the aim is the same: to offer a memory part tailored for the cellphone and palmtop markets.

Of the two, BAT-RAM seems the inferior. It has begun sampling at 64Mb (8MB) in 2Mb x 32 configuration, and draws either 2.5V or 3.3V. The first MRAM chips come in at 128Mb (8Mb x 16) and run at 2.5V.

Infineon's mobile memory uses a couple of power-saving features, Micron's just one: temperature compensated self-refresh, which adjusts the chip's self-refresh rate and power consumption according to its temperature. MRAM does that too - it also switches off the self-refresh individual parts of the chip.

But why this sudden burst of mobile SDRAM technologies? Simple: JEDEC is working on the spec. for a low-power DRAM chip standard, so all the contenders are shouting loudly about their offerings in the hope that JEDEC will base its standard on their technology.