Fujitsu Sees Future in FC RAM

Electronic News, Jan 24, 2000 by Tom Murphy

Fujitsu Microelectronics Inc. (FMI) started its migration away from mainstream DRAM production last week as it released a 64Mbit fast cycle RAM (FCRAM) with double data rate (DDR) SDRAM interface. The planned product will initially be aimed at graphics and multimedia applications.

Fujitsu's FCRAM is the first in a planned series of what the company calls applications-specific memory (ASM) products based on FCRAM architecture. The new ASMs are designed for 200MHz clock speed and a 400Mbit/sec./pin data transfer rate. All versions use page mode operation. Random access speeds have been measured at a random cycle time at 30 nanoseconds.

As DRAM has evolved from use primarily in PCs into consumer, telecommunication and networking products, Fujitsu has found these uses require a high performance and more diverse memory products.

"Fujitsu is going after smaller companies who have more profitable niches with the FCRAM," said Steve Cullen, memory analyst for Cahners In-Stat Group, Scottsdale, Ariz. "For high-performance graphics applications, this chip can be better than DDR SDRAM. Fujitsu is aiming for the higher end of the high-end niches."

Jim Handy, an analyst at Gartner Group/Dataquest, San Jose, sees the FCRAM coming more into play as different approaches for its uses are developed.

"You're likely to see it incorporated into system-level integration and used as an SRAM substitute," said Handy. "Fujitsu came up with a way to get the costs out of ASICs. The part is built smaller than an SRAM but it is on par with performance."

System designers are now struggling with DRAM technology as the last bottleneck for performance. One solution has been to add to the number of cells, which primarily gives direct Rambus DRAM its performance edge. However, Rambus is at a cost and die size disadvantage to traditional DRAM. Fujitsu's FCRAM adds cells but has the same die size. However, the part will cost about $25, contrasting to 64Mbit SDRAMs that sell for around $8 each, according to Cullen.

"This FCRAM core has two features," said Fumio Baba, vice president of advanced memory for FMI. "First, it is low latency and second, it is low power. We're going to combine the FCRAM with the other leading edge technologies. We have ample experience with higher interface technologies, low- power technologies and packaging technologies."

"Fujitsu expects that the FCRAM technology will make a significant design contribution to a wide range of applications," said Ryusuke Hoshikawa, chairman of FMI. "The FCRAM products introduced provide high-speed random access capabilities by combining the FCRAM core with the high-speed data transfer rate provided by DDR. This version is ideal for graphic and imaging buffer memory implementations such as are required for digital TVs, set-top boxes and similar applications. Future versions will expand our base of applications."

Fujitsu claims that its FCRAM series is warranted by the diversity of applications that call for high performance. FCRAM includes memory array segmentation and internal pipelining that speed random access and reduce power consumption.

The Fujitsu FCRAM series is sampling.