IBM to Produce Micron's First Commercial 3D Memory Chips

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IBM and Micron Technology, Inc. announced today that Micron will begin production of a new memory device built using the first commercial CMOS manufacturing technology to employ through-silicon vias (TSVs). IBM's advanced TSV chip-making process enables Micron's Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) to achieve speeds 15 times faster than today's technology.

Micron's Hybrid Memory Cube features a stack of individual chips connected by vertical pipelines or “vias,” shown above. IBM’s new 3-D manufacturing technology, used to connect the 3D micro structure, will be the foundation for commercial production of the new memory cube.
 
3D or stacked memory chips. Not a new idea, but it's nice to finally see it being used in this fashion :)
 
Yes, not new idea, but IMO very exciting to see it in commercial production phase.
 
HMC delivers bandwidth and efficiencies a leap beyond current device capabilities. HMC prototypes, for example, clock in with bandwidth of 128 gigabytes per second (GB/s). By comparison, current state-of-the-art devices deliver 12.8 GB/s. HMC also requires 70 percent less energy to transfer data while offering a small form factor — just 10 percent of the footprint of conventional memory.
Click to expand...

Sounds good in theory with the less energy usage + considerably smaller footprint. I'm not sure why but 128 gigabytes per second doesn't sound 'THAT' fast for 15x faster? Is it because I'm spoiled by the bandwidth of video cards? Ah that's why it doesn't sound 15x faster:

"134.4 Gbps memory bandwidth (maximum)" according to ATI's spec page for the 6870. So it's really "memory" that's almost as fast as ... other... "memory". Unless this is not intended for RAM and is intended for long term memory storage in which case that is a pretty darn impressive speed. Would blow most modern SSD throughput out of the water.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desk...d-6870/pages/amd-radeon-hd-6870-overview.aspx
 
They are talking about the speed of a single device (aka chip) here.

Video cards get their massive bandwidth by using multiple devices in parallel.
 
Gigbytes not gigabits I think.

Correct me if I'm wriong but Gbps stands for Gigbits per sec. They're talking about gigBYTES.
 
Wasn't toshiba working on something similar. I recall it was supposed to come out a couple of years ago.
 
yes, lower case 'b' means 'gits'
upper case 'B' means 'bytes'... I know sometimes it gets messed up
 
WBurchnall said:
Sounds good in theory with the less energy usage + considerably smaller footprint. I'm not sure why but 128 gigabytes per second doesn't sound 'THAT' fast for 15x faster? Is it because I'm spoiled by the bandwidth of video cards? Ah that's why it doesn't sound 15x faster:

"134.4 Gbps memory bandwidth (maximum)" according to ATI's spec page for the 6870. So it's really "memory" that's almost as fast as ... other... "memory". Unless this is not intended for RAM and is intended for long term memory storage in which case that is a pretty darn impressive speed. Would blow most modern SSD throughput out of the water.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desk...d-6870/pages/amd-radeon-hd-6870-overview.aspx
Click to expand...
Because 134Gbps is 16.75GB/sec, so yes, it is faster.

128GB/sec would be 1024Gbps/sec.
 
"Memory cube"? Anyone else having flashbacks to cheesy '80s and '90s science fiction? :)
 
I want memory spheres I can roll around. Or plastic memory you can mould into shapes, then shove into the dimm slots and it works. The more channels you shove it into the better tha bandwidth! I should patent that. It's the future! :D
 
I hope this tech finally reaches the regular consumers. The proposed advances would be incredible.
 
Rambus is probably working on a lawsuit against micron and ibm.

It's nice to see this technology coming to market.
 
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