South Korea’s chipmakers are steadily mastering more and more complex parts, and Mitsubishi Electric Corp and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd have agreed to be alternate sources of cache dynamic random access memory chips used in video image processing, Mitsubishi said. The cache DRAM is a dynamic integrated with a static RAM, and replaces standard video RAMs with a part that’s smaller, cheaper, and draws less power. Under the agreement, the Seoul, South Korea company will make cache DRAMs to the same external specifications as Mitsubishi, so customers have more than one source of supply. Mitsubishi plans to fabricate 100,000 4M-bit cache DRAMs a month starting in September, expanding output to a target of 1m a month over time. It also intends to start fabricating second generation 16M-bit versions in June next year.
