DIMMs reduce power consumption in servers

Addressing power consumption issues in data centers and other applications, Spansion Inc. has unveiled its "green memory" line.

Spansion has begun shipping its so-called EcoRAM technology. Last year, the company originally announced the EcoRAM architecture.

At the time, the company claimed EcoRAM would solve the growing energy consumption crisis in the data center by replacing power-hungry DRAM in servers. Servers use DRAM-based DIMMs, which offers fast access to data at high levels of power.

With EcoRAM, Spansion claims that it can increase the performance of selected read-intensive Internet applications by up to 50x. EcoRAM is also said to alleviate the need to shuffle data back and forth between HDDs and DRAM by storing large data sets directly in this memory technology.

Spansion also claims EcoRAM is being used by the oil and gas industry for visualization and other read-intensive applications. The Stanford Exploration Project (SEP), for example, recently selected Spansion's EcoRAM solution to reduce the processing time of multi-terabyte datasets. SEP is an industry-funded academic consortium whose purpose is to research improvements in the theory and practice of constructing 3D and 4D images of the earth.

EcoRAM does not totally replace DRAM in the server. EcoRAM is not a discrete part, but rather it is sold as a DIMM, said John Nation, corporate marketing manager for Spansion.

EcoRAM itself is based on the Spansion's MirrorBit NOR technology. In addition to the component-level products, the EcoRAM-based DIMM solution also includes software and accelerators.

- Mark LaPedus
EE Times