Samsung yesterday said it had finished work on a 288Mb DRAM chip based on the Direct Rambus format. The South Korean manufacturer announced plans to start mass production of the semiconductor this month. It aims to churn out two million units of the RDRAM component, which is based on 0.17-micron technology, per month, the Korea Herald reported. Samsung also said it had developed a 576MB Rambus in-line memory module (RIMM) using 16 288Mb RDRAM chips. The company did not give a start date for volume manufacture of the RIMMs or pricing details on the semiconductors or modules. But Samsung said it aimed to speed up production of Rambus products in general and expected Rambus to account for around half the DRAM market by 2002. The new chip technology was said to be able to draw a pattern measuring one-600th of the width of a human hair. ® Related stories Intel snubs Rambus ink Samsung to spend $3 billion on Rambus boost Rambus Intel contract set to expire