Winbond Electronics released a new line of serial peripheral interface flash (SPI Flash) memory chips designed to have tiny board footprints (sizes). 8-pin SPI Flash memory chips are in almost every part of today's computers, be it the chip that stores motherboard or VGA BIOS, the one that stores third-party controller firmware, or even boot ROM of network cards. Its applications get even broader with consumer electronics devices. Winbond launched new 8-pin SPI Flash chips in ultra-thin small-outline no-lead (USON) and wafer-level-ball-grid-array (WLBGA) form-factors, that have 20% smaller board footprints than common WSON and SOIC packages.

Winbond's new 6 mm² USON SPI Flash chips come in sizes of 512 Kb, 1 Mb, 2 Mb, 4 Mb, and 8 Mb, and with voltage options of common 2.5V and 3V. Low-power 1.8V options are available, too. The WLBGA SPIFlash chips will be available in 8 Mb and 16 Mb capacities, with package sizes of 3.4 mm² and 4.8 mm², respectively. Currently these chips are built on the more common 90 nm bulk manufacturing process, but Winbond expects to transition to 58 nm bulk process, driving down costs, in the future.

Elpida Memory, Inc., Japan's leading global supplier of Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), today announced that it had completed development of a high-density, high-speed, low-power consumption 50nm process 2-gigabit GDDR5 using copper interconnects (product name: EDW2032BABG). The new GDDR5, the first graphics DRAM designed by Elpida, was developed at the company's Munich Design Center in Germany.

Applications for GDDR (GDDR: Graphics Double Data Rate) memory devices used with GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) are found not only in such graphic processing equipment as game consoles and PC graphics cards but also in equipment that require high-performance computing for use in such areas as science and technology, physical simulation, digital image processing and video conversion. Using 2-gigabit GDDR5 in these applications can double the frame buffer size of each GPU compared with 1-gigabit memory products.

Elpida Memory, Inc., Japan's leading global supplier of Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), and Winbond Electronics Corp. today announced that they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for DRAM foundry services that will see Winbond manufacture DRAMs under contract to Elpida. The outsourcing agreement is the first step of a business partnership the two companies intend to pursue further.

The agreement pertains to the supply of GDDR3 and GDDR5 graphic DRAMs for Elpida. Prior to this agreement Winbond and Elpida have been working together to commercialize GDDR3 and GDDR5 DRAM products. Winbond is preparing to begin commercial production of these products by the end of 2009 while Elpida plans to begin purchasing the output in the first half of 2010.