SEOUL -- Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. today (Feb. 27) said Intel Corp. has signed a final agreement to fund additional production capacity for 128-megabit Rambus DRAMs. The Korean memory maker said it will now be able to produce at least 10 million 128-Mbit RDRAM chips a month without spending any of its own money as a result of the strategic alliance.
Details about Intel's investment were not released. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip giant is funding Samsung's capacity expansion to help boost availability of DRAMs based a wideband architecture from Rambus Inc. RDRAMs are primarily used by Intel's Pentium 4 processors in computer systems.
Samsung said it expects market demand for Rambus DRAMs to reach 300 million chips in 2001, with 250 million being used in Pentium 4-based PCs and workstations. About 50 million RDRAMs will be used in high-performance game products this year, said the Korean company.
By 2002, the market demand will double to 600 million, predicted Samsung. Last month, the company claimed it has developed a more affordable Rambus memory for PCs. This chip design has a die size that's 5% smaller than existing memories, Samsung said (see Jan. 17 story).
Samsung said the Intel pact will enable it to being ramping production of 128-Mbit Rambus chips in March. Samsung then plans to double RDRAM production to 20 million a month in the second half of 2001.
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