Patent War: Samsung settles dispute with Rambus
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Besides settling all the claims between them, ¬Samsung Electronics and Rambus have also signed an agreement licensing Rambus’ patent portfolio covering all Samsung semiconductor products including a perpetual fully paid-up license to certain current DRAM products. As per the agreement, US$200 million will be invested by Samsung in Rambus stock.
A memorandum of understanding (MOU) has also been sighed between the companies relating to a new generation of memory technologies.
The initial focus will be on graphics and mobile memory solutions. According to Harold Hughes, President and CEO of Rambus, bringing together Samsung’s market and technology leadership with their innovations for high-performance and high-efficiency memory architectures will make possible an exciting new generation of mobile, computing and consumer electronics products.
Samsung’s new 4GB memory chip to make phone card slots redundant
New chip to enable phone manufacturers to do away with external memory slots.
External flash memory slots in mobile phones may become a thing of the past if Samsung’s latest invention grabs the attention of phone manufacturers. The semiconductor manufacturer has developed a 4GB multi-chip package or MCP designed specifically for mobile phones and provides all the memory needed for the phone as well as doing away with the need for external flash memory slots, simplifying phone design, the company said.
Samsung has dubbed the new package moviMCP†and features 4GB of embedded memory for general use, a 1Gbit mobile memory chip for use by the phone’s microprocessor plus a 2Gbit flash memory chip for general phone operation.
The moviMCP has an embedded memory control inside based on the eMMC standard from the MultiMediaCard Association, making it much simpler to design mobile phones with large amounts of storage. Previously, phone manufacturers would need to develop software that controls how the memory is accessed. Samsung’s moviMCP removes the need for that.
Market research firm iSuppli is being reported by Samsung as forecasting the third-generation mobile phone market will reach 392million units sold this year and grow at the rate of 40% per year through until 2010.
By removing the need for an external flash memory slot, phone manufacturers will be able to make 4GB multimedia phones at reduced cost. However, such phones are likely to appeal to the entry-level market rather than the enthusiast market as a result of the fixed storage.
The new memory chips are said to be trialling with phone manufacturers at the moment. Samsung did not say whether or not the new chips would be used in Apple’s upcoming iPhone, which Apple has announced will be available in a fixed 4GB capacity model.
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