Reduces power consumption by 3X over traditional serial link implementations
LOS ALTOS, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES – 02/12/2007 – Rambus Inc. (NASDAQ:RMBS), one of the world’s premier technology licensing companies specializing in high-speed memory architectures, today unveiled low power signaling technologies targeted at multi-Gbps platforms. Through this initiative, Rambus has achieved a 3X power reduction when compared to traditional serial link implementations while still delivering high performance. In its labs, Rambus demonstrated its low power technologies in a test transceiver that transferred more than 3,600 Terabits of data, the equivalent of the contents of nearly 100,000 standard-format DVDs, utilizing the power of only two standard AA batteries.
Rambus will be presenting a paper on the results of this initiative on February 14, 2007 at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco, CA.
“Rambus invests in technologies that provide the highest interface performance for a range of power envelopes,” said Kevin Donnelly, senior vice president of Engineering at Rambus. “This initiative further illustrates the innovative work our team is doing to help reduce power consumption without sacrificing performance. Working with our customers, we look forward to bringing these low power innovations to market.”
Rambus took a systems-level approach to reducing power in a multi-Gbps transceiver architecture. After analyzing the breakdown of power distribution in existing transceivers, Rambus developed a test chip in a 90nm foundry process technology that operates at 6.25 Gbps over a channel with -15dB of loss. The test transceiver dissipates 14 mW, resulting in a power-performance metric of 2.2 mW/Gbps. Rambus innovations, such as a low-offset receiver, low-swing voltage-mode transmitter, low-bandwidth CDR, and low-power phase rotator, enable significant power reduction over existing state-of-the-art transceiver designs.
The Rambus low power signaling technologies can be applied to future parallel bus and serial link products for use in power-sensitive compute and consumer applications.
About Rambus Inc.
Rambus is one of the world’s premier technology licensing companies specializing in the invention and design of high-speed chip architectures. Since its founding in 1990, the Company’s patented innovations, breakthrough technologies and renowned integration expertise have helped industry-leading chip and system companies bring superior products to market. Rambus’ technology and products solve customers’ most complex chip and system-level interface challenges enabling unprecedented performance in computing, communications and consumer electronics applications. Rambus licenses both its world-class patent portfolio as well as its family of leadership and industry-standard interface products. Headquartered in Los Altos, California, Rambus has regional offices in North Carolina, India, Germany, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Additional information is available at www.rambus.com.
