SAN JOSE, Calif. — After a slow start due to high costs, DRAM makers are finally experiencing the long-awaited demand for double-data-rate (DDR) 2 SDRAM products.
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., for one, on Wednesday (August 11) said that it has entered the DRAM “crossover” point between DDR1 and DDR2 devices as main memory for PCs.
As of July, some 40 percent of the company's total DRAM output is DDR2 and approximately 30 percent is DDR1. This marks the first month that production of DDR2 has crossed over to take the lead from DDR1 in bits produced, according to Samsung (Seoul).
"The industry has been waiting for a clear indication that DDR2 has become the dominant memory for electronic data processing applications. We are seeing an upsurge in interest in DDR2 from system OEMs as well as system integrators, something that will continue to accelerate into 2006," said Tom Quinn, senior vice president of memory sales and marketing at Samsung Semiconductor (San Jose), in a statement.
The company has seen a 30-fold growth for DDR2 in the past 12 months. DDR2 technology claims to provide faster speeds, better signal integrity, improved thermal characteristics and reduced power consumption over DDR1.
DDR2 took some time to develop. "DDR2 market penetration may not have been quite as fast as some expected, but it's accelerating rapidly now, spiking demand for higher performance to drive increased unit sales of PCs, notebooks and servers," said Victor De Dios, president of De Dios & Associates, a market research firm.
DDR2 sales will increase from $1.5 billion in 2004 to $6.5 billion this year to $18 billion in 2006, according to the firm.
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