Siemens shows 1-Gbit DRAM

Siemens shows 1-Gbit DRAM
MUNICH, Germany Л Siemens AG's semiconductor division is showing its first 1-Gbit DRAM, the result of a collaboration with IBM Microelectronics. Siemens said the device, displayed at the Electronica '98 exhibition, is both the smallest and fastest 1-Gbit DRAM yet shown. The part will be available in the second quarter of next year.

The chip, a synchronous DRAM part, has a die area of 390 mm² and is manufactured in a 0.18-micron CMOS process technology. The 1-Gbit SDRAM will be available in organizations of x16 and x32 and offers double data rate (DDR) functionality. This feature enables the chip to achieve a data rate of 400 Mbits/second/pin, making it the world's fastest DDR SDRAM device, Siemens said.

In its 32-bit-wide configuration the device allows system data-transfer rates of 1.6 Gbytes/s. The chip operates at 2.5 V and uses the trench-cell architecture of previous Siemens DRAM generations.

The 1-Gbit SDRAM was developed with IBM at that company's Advanced Semiconductor Technology Center in East Fishkill, N.Y. Samples, packaged in 16-mm-wide TSOP 88, will be available in the second quarter of 1999, Siemens said.

"We are proud to present a chip of such a complexity at such a small die size in a technology which means we can achieve volume manufacturing in the near future," said Andreas von Zitzewitz, president of Siemens Semiconductors' memory products division. "We have chosen four-level metalization — one tungsten and three aluminum metal layers — to increase the cell efficiency and reduce die size."

The initial lead applications for the 1-Gbit SDRAM are high-end servers, workstations, networking devices and portable computing devices.

The 1-Gbit technology is also expected to open up new applications that would find ways to utilize the single device's storage capacity of about 64,000 pages of text or 90 minutes of stereo-quality audio.