IBM Corp. on Tuesday revealed a new type of memory technology that could dramatically increase the speed of graphics in video games, networking and other intensive multimedia uses.

The new technology, which IBM calls the first of its kind for memory on a chip, has the fastest ever access times seen for its class of memory, the company's researchers say.

IBM says this prototype embedded dynamic random access memory chip represents a major breakthrough in microchip design that will more than triple the amount of memory on a single high-end chip.
(IBM)

In papers presented at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, IBM said the embedded dynamic random access memory (eDRAM) vastly improves memory performance in about one-third the space of conventional static random access memory (SRAM) and with one-fifth of the standby time.

The IBM technology, which uses a process that places silicon semiconductors onto an insulator, translates into high performance at low power, according to researchers.

Smaller chips and their circuitry shorten the distance that electrical signals have to travel, and low power consumption means the chips don't heat up as much, which can cause electrical resistance. Both improvements have the effect of speeding up the rate at which a computer processor can gain access to data in memory, improving overall computer performance.

IBM anticipates it will use the technology in its 45-nanometre processors that are to be available in 2008. A nanometre is a billionth of a metre. A human hair is about 100,000 nanometres wide.

The process of reducing the size of chips and their circuit pathways is commonly referred to as scaling.

"With this breakthrough solution to the processor/memory gap, IBM is effectively doubling microprocessor performance beyond what classical scaling alone can achieve," said Subramanian Iyer, director of 45-nm technology development at IBM.

"As semiconductor components have reached the atomic scale, design innovation at the chip-level has replaced materials science as a key factor in continuing Moore's Law."

The popular version of Moore's Law states that the number of transistors on a circuit — and therefore computing power — doubles every 18 months. But as chips approach the atomic scale and the ability to miniaturize components becomes more challenging, the physical limits of Moore's Law are being reached.

The prototype chip contains more than 12 million bits. A bit is the most basic unit of computer memory and can store information as either a one or zero — on or off. Eight bits make a byte. A megabyte in commercial interpretations of the term is one million bytes.