Kingston Technology's plan to sample DDR 2 DIMMs by the end of the year has moved a step closer to completion after the company gave the thumbs up to Elpida's 110nm 512Mb DDR 2 chips.

The two companies today said unbuffered DIMMs built upon Elpida's memory had tested successfully for compliance with JEDEC standards.

Having sunk $50 million into Elpida's DDR 2 production facilities, Kingston is no doubt chuffed that its investment is paying off. The cash bought Kingston an undisclosed quantity of non-voting stock - and presumably good access to Elpida's DDR 2.

DDR 2 is expected to become the memory spec. of choice for top-end PCs next year. Not only faster than today's DDR, DDR 2 consumes less power and dissipates less heat.

"DDR2 memory will present technology transition challenges to the memory module industry, and Kingston has already upgraded its manufacturing facilities to provide high-volume production capacity of DDR2 modules," said Al Soni, Kingston's VP for strategic alliances.

Kingston's PC4300 DDR 2DIMMs yield a peak data transfer rate of 4.3GBps, the company said - and 8.6GBps if they're put into a dual-channel system.

The company has promised to ship early versions of its DDR 2 DIMMs to chipset makers and mobo manufacturers by the end of the year. ®

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