If an Oscar could be presented for semiconductors, processors would perennially be in strong contention for the Best Actor award, while memory would be a shoo-in for Best Supporting Actor in any given year. Memory has long been the "silent enabler" for an incredible range of digital devices. A decade of memory advances not only has accelerated the convergence of handsets, computers and cameras, but has helped greatly to expand new markets, such as those for MP3 players and GPS devices.

While the value of memory is essentially "invisible" to end users, designers have long recognized that memory is what makes the user experience exceptionally strong. It is the fuel that runs the performance engine.

A prime example of this can be seen in Windows Vista, which is enabling new capabilities and a more desirable user experience with PCs. An insufficient amount of DRAM can choke Vista's performance. At least 1 and preferably 2 Gbytes of DRAM will considerably enhance the user experience. Additionally, discrete graphics memory (128 to 256 Mbytes), in concert with a separate graphics processing unit (GPU), is key to attaining optimal performance from the premium version of Windows Vista. With more than the recommended amount of memory, Vista users should see markedly improved performance.

Memory's supportive contribution is not new. As PCs evolved into a general-purpose computing platform over the past two decades, an entirely new entertainment category emerged: gaming. Consider gaming from a historical perspective. In December 1989, Sega launched its 16-bit Sega Genesis console (with 64 kbytes of system memory and 64 kbytes of video RAM). Five years later, in December 1994, Sony launched the 24-bit Playstation in Japan, and a short time later it released a version with 2 Mbytes of system memory and 1 Mbyte of video RAM in the United States.

Today, gaming consoles with much-improved 3-D technology powered by major advances in memory technology have taken the entertainment world by storm. Gaming now rivals the movie industry as the most popular type of entertainment in the world. Created strictly for the purpose of interactive entertainment, consoles have spawned a $10 billion industry, with advanced memory fueling an increasingly refined world of 3-D graphics.

What made this possible has been not only more creative games, but the use of high-speed RDRAM with high-performance processors to meet the demands of 3-D graphics animation. Today, a similar trend propelled mostly by GDDR3 and in some cases by XDR DRAM is enabling consoles to display games in HD resolution with incredibly realistic animation.

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The new generation of consoles has 113 percent more bandwidth--with twice the frame rates and HDTV resolution--than the previous generation, according to Jon Peddie Research.

In general, all of the bleeding edge, high-performance memories are typically 32-bit-wide components of GDDR3 and GDDR4 technology.

In specifying the most suitable graphics memory, while 128 to 256 Mbytes of 800-Mbits/second GDDR2 is fine for driving spreadsheets and presentations, games in which monsters take on fast, believable motion that pumps the adrenaline requires two to four times more GDDR3 or GDDR4 memory running at triple the data rate. A major factor is the width of the GPU bus with which the memory is interfacing. A 64- to 128-bit bus is sufficient for office applications, but PC gaming requires anywhere from 256 to 512 bits.

Graphics savior

Graphical animation is expected to improve at least another 200 percent over the next four years, made possible by marked improvements in high-speed memory, particularly GDDR4 for PCs and, soon, GDDR5.

Added to this refinement is advancement in graphics memory, whereby component bandwidth will improve from 2 Gbits/second to 6 Gbits/s. In addition, component memory density will have increased to at least 1 Gbit per memory chip, providing enough storage capacity to hold every facial detail and natural imperfection of hundreds of characters and textural surfaces.

Today, memory serves as even more of a catalyst in the consumer electronics sector than in the world of PCs. Ready availability of low-cost flash memory and low-power DRAM literally exploded the category of small, lightweight, affordable MP3 players. Other applications taking advantage of this trend are multimedia GPS and electronic books.

The cost of NAND flash memory (preferred for multimedia applications) has dropped an average of 40 percent per year over the past decade. This will allow it to make major inroads as a performance-boost alternative to low-density hard drives in notebooks over the next three to four years, offering increased reliability, greater portability and an attractive total cost of ownership. In the coming years, we will be able to carry not only our audio libraries, but also our video libraries, wherever we go.

The communications and entertainment worlds have a high probability of actually merging, thanks to this irreversible trend in the NAND flash value proposition, which eliminates future trade-offs between adequate storage capacity and the size/weight of bulky hard drives. This convergence is driving a second coming of flash as the catalyst of a new age of cost-efficient electronics.

It's hard to refute that rapid technological advancements in memory are fueling the entire mobile industry, while injecting much-needed life into the PC market. But stay tuned. Memory will mean much more to the mass electronics marketplace over the next decade. We've only scratched the surface.

Mueez Deen (mdeen@ssi.samsung.com) is director of mobile and graphics memory at Samsung Semiconductor Inc. He has more than 25 years' experience and holds a BSEE from the University of Pennsylvania.