Micron Technology has announced what it claims to be the industry's first DDR3 load-reduced, dual-inline memory module (LRDIMM) for servers. The new LRDIMMs will be manufactured using Micron's 1.35 volt, 2Gb 50nm DDR3 memory chips.
Micron's LRDIMMs currently use Inphi's recently announced isolation memory buffer (iMB) chip in place of a register to reduce the bus load when transferring data between the memory and processor. The new LRDIMMs reduce this load by 50% for a dual-rank module and 75% for a quad-rank module, when compared to today's standard DDR3 server modules – registered DIMMs (RDIMMs).
Using RDIMMs can accommodate up to three quad-rank 16GB RDIMMS per processor. However, that same system can support up to nine quad-rank 16GB LRDIMMS per processor, pushing the memory capacity from 48GB to 144GB, Micron said. The new 16GB LRDIMM offers an increase of 57% in system memory bandwidth when compared to an RDIMM.
Citing Gartner, Micron said most mid-range enterprise servers today utilize approximately 32GB of DRAM per system, and the capacity is expected to more than triple by 2012.
Micron is currently sampling an 8GB LRDIMM devices with select enablers, according to the company. Mass production of its 16GB LRDIMMs is expected to begin in the fourth quarter.