Features - Storage Innovations:

TOSHIBA UNVEILS 512Mb NETWORK FCRAM

Bringing the next higher density networking memory to market, Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc and its parent Toshiba Corp announced development of a series of 512Mb Network Fast Cycle RAMs (FCRAM) with a minimum random cycle time of 22.5 nanoseconds (ns), the fastest random cycle time yet achieved in FCRAM1. The new devices are dedicated to supporting high performance network applications, including switches and routers in network systems.

Toshiba's Network FCRAMs incorporate enhanced DRAM technology to achieve a large memory capacity and random access time rivaling the speed of SRAM. Narrowing the active memory area achieves low power consumption and a random cycle time performance more than double that of present DRAM.

"Our new line up of 512Mb FCRAM1 devices provide a selection of interfaces, speeds and organizations to meet the needs of the growing number of customers that are designing network equipment with Network FCRAM," said Scott Beekman, business development manager of communication memory products for TAEC. "With double the density, random cycle times down to 22.5ns, and data transfer rates up to 533Mb per second, these new network FCRAM1 memory devices provide a significant improvement in performance with a wide selection of features for design flexibility."

Toshiba currently manufactures Network FCRAM1 and FCRAM2 in 256Mb and 288Mb densities, respectively. Now, 512Mb Network FCRAM1 is available to expand the product offering. Toshiba Network FCRAM2 in 576Mb density, designed to support parity bits for error correction, is scheduled to be available in 2005. The specification of Toshiba's Network FCRAM is fully compatible with Samsung's Network-DRAM. Toshiba and Samsung will discuss standardization of the next generation Network FCRAM, scheduled for commercialization in 2005, with a planned operating frequency of over 400MHz.