Desi Rhoden, president of the new body, said that while AMI2 is not technically an offshoot of SLDRAM Inc., it has adopted its predecessor's bylaws and functional framework. "The purpose of AMI2 is to promote the development of the infrastructure to support the next level of DRAM technology," he said.

Word of the organization first emerged at the International Solid State Circuits conference earlier this year. Members include Fujitsu Ltd., Hitachi Ltd., Infineon Technologies AG, Micron Technology Inc. and Mitsubishi Electric.

The group's primary goal is to advance DDR memory while pushing members to plan for the architecture's next generation, DDR-2 DRAM. Rhoden said that systems with DDR-2 chips could be available in two years and that the designs will offer data-transfer rates of up to 4 Gbytes/second, double the bandwidth of existing DDR devices.

DDR-2 uses the memory-cell designs seen in both standard SDRAM and DDR DRAM chips, but it will feature some I/O designs to facilitate faster data rates. As with the SLDRAM chips and unlike Rambus memory, Rhoden said, the architecture will be offered as an open standard to the DRAM industry.

Though prototypes of SLDRAM were delivered last year to several of SLDRAM Inc.'s member-companies, the technology failed to catch on in the mainstream memory market. The formation of AMI2 and the move to cannibalize the technology into next-generation DDR designs could be the final nail in the SLDRAM coffin.

"They developed a packet-based part, and the industry didn't want it," said Rhoden. "And they still don't seem to want it."