Sunrise Electronics, exclusive distributor for Elpida Memory, Inc. (Elpida), the industry’s only major semiconductor company to focus completely on DRAM, has just announced the availability of its 128 Megabit (4 Megabit x 32-bit) Synchronous DRAM (SDRAM) devices that combine high speed and low power for consumer applications such as: digital camcorders and cameras, cable or satellite set top boxes, digital televisions and car navigation systems.

DRAMs are typically considered to be commodity devices, driven to volume production by the requirements of the PC market. During the past year, however, other applications such as mobile devices, consumer appliances and networking systems have reached high volume status and are driving the need for new combinations of DRAM features and performance. The combination of high speed, low voltage and low power makes this new configuration of SDRAM ideally suited for consumer applications that need a fair amount of memory.

According to Peter Westerdorf, technical marketing and engineering manager for Elpida Memory (Europe) GmBH, "Digital consumer applications require high speed data processing performance, and many of these applications, such as digital video camcorders and digital still cameras, are battery operated. Consequently, these applications strive to achieve high data computing performance while maximizing battery life."

Performance and power naturally require a tradeoff in chip design, however, Elpida’s new Consumer SDRAM achieves a respectable balance: the 166 MHz version operates at 3.3 V with CAS Latency (CL) =3; and the 133 MHz version operates at only 2.5 V with CL=3. The operating currents for both devices are 135mA and 120mA respectively, and the self-refresh current (Idd6) is only 600µA in the low power version. This low power value offers ultimate power savings compared with standard synchronous DRAMs that have a typical self-refresh current in the range of 2mA. The recommended temperature range is from 0° to 70° C for both devices.

The 128Mbit (1Megabit x 32-bit x 4 bank) devices are manufactured using Elpida’s proven 0.15µm CMOS DRAM process technology. The devices employ a standard SDRAM interface, and they are available in 90-ball FBGA or 86-pin TSOP (II) packages for flexible design integration.

Elpida Memory, Inc. is a technology leader in Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) with headquarters based in Tokyo, Japan, and sales and marketing operations located in Japan, North America, Europe and Asia. Elpida offers a broad range of leading-edge DRAM products including SDRAM, RDRAM®, DDR SDRAM, Mobile RAM and now Consumer SDRAM. Device densities currently range up to 512 Megabytes each, and Module (DIMM) densities range up to 2 Gigabytes each. Elpida offers a variety of standard and high performance packaging techniques, including TSOP, BGA, FBGA, Tape Carrier Package (TCP), and Double Density Package (DDP).

Elpida’s research, design and development operations were merged from NEC and Hitachi on April 1, 2000 and sales and marketing operations commenced in Q1, 2001. Elpida’s main DRAM foundries are located at NEC Hiroshima and Hitachi Nippon Steel Semiconductor Singapore. Elpida’s own 300 mm DRAM wafer-manufacturing facility is scheduled to begin production by January 2003. For datasheets and more information, visit Elpida's World Wide Web site.

Sunrise Electronics was formed in 1992 as a single line, dedicated, distributor for NEC Electronics. The company employs an Engineering-qualified field sales force which is focused on design orientated sales opportunities in volume users, who recognise and value the level of technical support that Sunrise delivers. Experienced internal support ensures that the customers’ commercial requirements are fully met.