Toshiba Corp will ship in September an advanced dynamic random- access memory (DRAM) semiconductor capable of transferring data at twice the speed of 64-megabit DRAM chips, according to The Nihon Keizai Shimbun. Toshiba is hoping to get the jump on rivals by being the first to market the new chip. The 72M Direct Rambus DRAM is based on technology from Rambus Inc, a company that generated a great deal of hype at its initial public offering last year (CI No 3,161) amid high hopes that its high-speed memory chip interface technology would some day become an industry standard. A host of big-name players have endorsed the technology, including Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc, NEC Corp, Texas Instruments Corp, Siemens AG and PC maker Gateway Inc. Bill Gates and Michael Dell were among original investors in the Mountain View, California company. Chips made with its technology are expected to account for about half of the DRAM market by 2001. Toshiba boasts that its new chip is capable of transferring data at a speed of 1.6 gigabytes per second and provides instant display of complex 3D images. Mass-production of the chip will begin in January 1999, with monthly output slated for 500,000 units.
