Semiconductor giants Toshiba of Japan and Germany’s Infineon said on Wednesday they have invented a tiny chip with a vast memory capacity, marking the first fruit of a joint development plan launched in 2001.
The 32 megabit ferroelectric random access memory (FeRAM) chip is thought to have the highest memory capacity to date, said a representative from Toshiba.
FeRAM, a non-volatile device with low power consumption, combines the fast operating characteristic of dynamic random access memory and static read only memory, with flash memory ability to retain data while switched off.
The new FeRAM reduces the overall area of the chip to only 96 millimeters square, half the size of a conventional device, which would help to reduce production costs, the two firms said.
Fifty engineers from Toshiba Corp. and Infineon Technologies AG have been working on developing the chip at Toshiba’s Advanced Microelectronics Centre and Semiconductor Technology Centre in Yokohama, just outside of Tokyo.
The Japanese firm said it has not yet firmed up details of a shipment plan for the new chip. – Sapa-AFP