QDR Consortium unveils new, highest-speed QDR SRAMs

SAN JOSE, USA: The QDR Consortium, which includes Cypress Semiconductor Corp. and Renesas Electronics Corp., announced the industry’s fastest Quad Data Rate (QDR) SRAMs (static random access memory).

The new memory devices will be named QDRII+ Xtreme and will operate at clock speeds as fast as 633 megahertz (MHz). They will be fit-, form- and function-compatible with existing QDR II+ devices, allowing manufacturers of network switches, routers and aggregation platforms to boost performance by simply increasing clock speeds within the system without any board design changes.

The new QDR II+ Xtreme SRAMs will be offered with either x18 or x36 word widths, and with bursts of 4 or 2 access. The burst of 4 devices delivers a random transaction rate (RTR) of 633 million random transactions per second, operating at clock speeds of 633 MHz, the highest available for a QDR SRAM.

The burst of two offerings operate at a frequency of 450 MHz and offer an RTR of 900 million random transactions per second, which doubles the RTR of the prior generation burst of four devices running at the same frequency. Random transaction rate is defined as the number of fully random memory accesses per second and is the critical memory metric enabling increased line/switching rates.

“The QDR II+ Xtreme products provide a significant performance boost without requiring a system re-design, which is very appealing to networking equipment vendors looking to keep up with traffic demands,“ said Dana Nazarian, Executive Vice President of the Memory Division at Cypress. "The QDR Consortium is actively defining a series of follow-on solutions which support the networking industry’s ever-increasing memory requirements.”

“SRAM devices are another excellent option for customers who are seeking high-performance memory solutions,” said Hiroyuki Goto, Senior Manager, Industry & Network Business Division, Renesas Electronics Corporation. “We’re pleased to stay on the forefront of SRAM technology with the QDR II+ Xtreme architecture.”

First engineering samples of the 36 megabit (Mb) and 72Mb QDR II+ Xtreme devices from Cypress are expected for lead customers in mid-2011.