Price of DDR2 over the last 18 months   Posted on 04/07/2008 at 17:45 by Marc

	Here is the price of DDR2 64 and 128 MB chips in dollars as we have recorded them these last 18 months on Dramexchange. As you can see, prices have been stable in 2008 compared to collapses in 2007. Consumers can only be satisfied with the current market; however, manufacturers are impatiently waiting for prices to rise which has not yet happened. This is understandable given their financial results compared to last year. For example, Qimonda (ex-Infineon) showed 412 million Euros in sales for the first quarter and a 482 million loss compared to 984 million in revenue and 57 million in profits a year ago. Also, a year ago, Elpida had 144.2 million dollars in sales for 8.5 million in profits while this year gross revenue reached 90.4 million for a loss of 29.2 million.

JEDEC validates DDR3L and its 1.35V   Posted on 20/06/2008 at 12:11 by Nicolas - source: Xbit-labs

	Before moving, the JEDEC had the time to validate an improvement called DDR3L which is part of the current DDR3 standard. It enables reducing the default voltage of 1.5V to 1.35V. Thus, this is a 10% reduction which may enable some to decrease energy use by 20% in many standard applications. Modules equipped with DDR3L will be labeled ‘’PC3L’’ and they should function with current motherboards in an optimal way because the SPD (a small EEPROM memory which fits on memory modules) communicates the specifications of the module. The JC-42.3 memory committee which is the origin of DDR3L hopes to go even further (probably going as low as 1.25V) and that manufacturers develop designs which are sufficiently flexible to be able to benefit from other future low power products.

AMD: the first to be OpenGL ES 2.0 certified   Posted on 12/06/2008 at 19:45 by Nicolas

	AMD has announced being the first to have obtained certification from the Khronos Group for its solutions supporting version 2.0 of OpenGL ES (Embedded Systems). This is rather good news because circuits developed by ATI, which use unified shader type architecture, already enabled the company to sign with ST, Freescale and Qualcomm amongst others. Some of these have also adopted OpenVG 1.0 circuits (a 2D vector graphics norm) sold by AMD’s graphic division. Tests were carried out on the Z430 development kit. You may recall that a Z460 was announced last February at the last Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and that ATI has also offered an OpenGL ES 2.0 emulator for roughly 10 months now. Note that Nvidia is likewise interested in this API as it is now supported by theAPX 2500.

OPA: widespread adoption of WiMAX   Posted on 10/06/2008 at 20:08 by Nicolas - source: Intel

	While Intel’s interest in WiMAX isn’t too recent, the Californian company seems to want to move to the next level. After having unveiled a $500 million investment plan over 5 years in Taiwan for the deployment of this technology, it announces the launch of the Open Patent Alliance (OPA) which was just formed with Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Clearwire, Samsung and Sprint. While the WiMAX Forum certifies interoperability and the WiMAX Spectrum Owners Alliance is looking to inform the industry and national regulatory agencies on the legitimacy of this technology, the new alliance will help participating companies to obtain the necessary licenses for offering products that adhere to the EEE 802.16e norm from these different manufacturers and for a predictable cost. Different solutions to do away with royalties will therefore be proposed and the WiMAX OPA will also serve as a central resource for anything related to WiMAX intellectual property. The first notebooks conceived with its integration are expected out in the second half of the year.

Disagreement surrounding USB 3.0   Posted on 10/06/2008 at 00:21 by Nicolas - source: News.com

	General USB 3.0 specifications have been known for some time now and Intel has already carried out some public demonstrations; however, the final specifications, which are largely borrowed from another "open" standard, PCI Express, cannot be revealed before 2009 while the first USB 3.0 marked products are expected out next year. AMD and Nvidia claim that Intel – which is developing this standard and will then give out free licenses – already has functional circuits but it is holding back crucial information concerning the "open" host controller although it is already or almost ready. This is supposedly to delay the arrival of USB 3.0 chipsets from its rivals. On the other side, the Santa Clara giant is saying that is still has some work to do on specifications before revealing them, without which the risk of incompatibility will be higher. AMD, Nvidia, VIA and others in the industry are threatening to develop a common set of alternative specifications to USB 3.0 which will be introduced in parallel to those of Intel. The first meeting devoted to the subject is moreover planned for next week. Let’s just hope that it won’t go this far and that the different parties quickly find some common ground. Otherwise, a large number of USB 3.0 peripherals will have to rely on retro-compatibility with USB 2.0 to function with standard speeds introduced in April 2000.