Elpida Memory on August 6 announced that it has reached an agreement with Qimonda, which is now in insolvency proceedings, to acquire the Germany-based chipmaker's technology licenses and a portion of the design assets related to graphics DDR (GDDR) chips.
Elpida also disclosed it is scheduled to volume ship 1Gb GDDR3 and 1Gb GDDR5 in the first half of 2010. The new graphics DRAM chips will be outsourced to Winbond Electronics, said the Japan-based memory maker, adding that the mass production of 2Gb GDDR5 is expected to take place at its Hiroshima Plant starting in the second half of the year.
Elpida's GDDR technology development will be mainly operated at its recently-built Munich Design Center, where nearly 50 engineers and other former Qimonda employees involved in the development work will take up new posts.
Elpida said it is looking to quickly ramp up a full-fledged GDDR business, while acknowledging the increased demand for applications such as game consoles.
"Graphics systems now need graphics buffer memory with a data transfer rate of more than 5Gb/sec given the rapidly growing popularity of high-definition format graphics data, 3D graphics and various display formats," said Elpida CTO Takao Adachi. "In response to this need we will shortly begin commercial production of GDDR5, for which an even faster data transfer rate of 8Gb/sec may be feasible in the near future.