San Jose, CA: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced semiconductor technology solutions, today announced that it is ramping up 50-nm class production of DDR3 memory chips this month – the most advanced system memory available. This is in response to increased demand stemming from Intel Corporation’s launch of its Intel^® Xeon^® processor 5500 series.

Samsung’s DDR3 enables OEMs to design servers that use up to 192 gigabytes (GBs) per system (16GBx12) and provides numerous improvements over its predecessor, DDR2, including at least a 60 percent improvement in power consumption and double the system performance, with speeds up to 1333 Megabits per second (Mbps).

Samsung’s DDR3 supports the high-performance requirements of a wide range of server applications including video on demand, streaming media content delivery, internet data centers, virtualization and on-line transaction processing.

“In conjunction with use of the Xeon processor 5500 series, DDR3 has the potential to dramatically improve the efficiency of data transactions in virtually any enterprise server application,” said Jim Elliott, vice president, memory marketing, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. “Our high-speed, low-power DDR3 solutions will go a long way toward advancing the design of new-generation, high-efficiency ‘green’ computing platforms,” he added.

“Our Xeon processor 5500 series together with DDR3 memory represents the most important change in system performance since Pentium^® Pro processor was introduced 14 years ago,” said Ali Sarabi, Director, Industry Initiatives and Pathfinding, Intel Corporation. “In addition, performance gains of the Intel Xeon Processor 5500 series relative to the prior generations are greater than for any Xeon processor we’ve ever delivered."

Forty 50-nm class Samsung DDR3 solutions have been validated to work with the Intel 5500 platform. The Samsung DDR3 devices that have passed Intel’s validation program include 1Gigabit (Gb) and 2Gb DRAM chips, as well as 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and 16GB registered DIMMs (dual-inline memory modules) and 1GB, 2GB and 4GB unbuffered DIMMs.

The newly validated DDR3 chips are available at speeds of 800 megabit per second (Mbps), 1066 Mbps and 1333 Mbps and can offer up to a 40 percent power savings at 1333Mbps, compared to 60-nm-class DDR3 chips.

Intel says it plans to launch its other two DDR3-only platforms during the second half of this year.