With many economies under inflation and other factors influencing a weak demand, these are perhaps the worst days for several companies involved in manufacture, marketing and distribution of DRAM and related products. While on the surface, all the consumer can see is a falling market price, in reality it is a composed chaos.

DigiTimes reports a falling demand for DRAM in the Asia-Pacific region as the Chinese government cracks down on users of contraband DRAM products brought in from manufacturing states. The government crackdown began with the thousands of internet-shacks and the components (both hardware and software) they used. All this comes ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics as a 'purge drive'. As a result, thousands of internet-shacks have been closed, bans have been imposed on the use of contraband hardware, most of which consist of DRAM related hardware. China also brought about changes in their customs routines and procedures making it extremely complicated for importers, stepping up waiting queues, affecting markets and more importantly, dampening demand.

Hynix plans to produce 54nm-based DRAM chips this year on schedule, saying this will "reduce the technology gap with Samsung," according to the company's CEO, quoted by the Korea Times. The company schedules to start production of 54-nano DRAMs in the third quarter, while Samsung is expected to commence production of 56-nano DRAMs near the end of the second quarter. The company also plans to gradually increase its use of 300mm chip fabrication lines to account for 95 percent of its entire DRAM production by 2012. The company runs three 300mm lines and five 200mm lines in its two plants in South Korea and one in China.

Qimonda AG, a leading global memory supplier, today announced its technology roadmap down to the 30nm generation and featuring cell sizes of 4F². Qimonda's innovative Buried Wordline DRAM technology combines high performance, low power consumption and small chip sizes to further advance the company's diversified product portfolio. Qimonda is introducing this leading edge technology now in 65nm and plans to begin production of a 1 Gbit DDR2 in the second half of calendar 2008.

Micron Technology today announced that it is sampling to customers and major enablers the industry's fastest 512 megabit (Mb) Mobile DRAM component, designed for the latest feature-rich mobile electronic devices. Mass production is expected in the second quarter of this year. With mobile applications adding increased computing and multimedia functionality, faster and better performing memory becomes paramount for optimizing performance.

NEC Electronics Corporation today introduced two new technologies for the manufacture of 40-nanometer (nm) system-on-chip (SoC) devices with embedded dynamic random access memory (eDRAM). The UX8GD eDRAM technology boasts clock speeds up to 800 megahertz and low operating power, making it optimal for use in consumer electronics products such as digital video cameras and game consoles. The UX8LD eDRAM technology features low leakage-current levels that reduce power consumption by as much two-thirds compared to equivalent SRAM, making it ideal for use in mobile handsets and other portable devices that require low standby power.

Elpida Memory, Inc., Japan's leading global supplier of Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) and Rambus Inc., one of the world's premier technology licensing companies specializing in high-speed chip architectures, today introduced the industry's fastest DRAM, the 512 Megabit (Mb), 4.8GHz XDR DRAM, based on Rambus' XDR memory architecture. This latest addition to the XDR DRAM family provides an industry-leading data transfer rate of 9.6 Gigabytes per second (GB/s) with a single device, making it an ideal choice for high-performance, high-volume applications such as high-definition televisions (HDTV), gaming consoles, PCs, servers and workstations.