The ideal for designers of portable electronic equipment is that it should run for a reasonable number of hours (three hours is about average for pocket televisions) from two, three or four standard AA alkaline batteries. Devices such as portable computers and cellular telephones are still a long way from that ideal, but every little low-power component helps, and Mitsubishi Electric Corp has done its bit with development of a 4M-bit dynamic RAM that runs off just 2.7V power and dissipates 10% less power than current parts, Comline reports. Access time is 70nS and the part starts sampling in January at $5.85; Mitsubishi plans to make 50,000 a month from February. It currently produces 3.5 million 4M-bit memory chips a month, and will steadily increase the proportion of the lower power parts.
