Kingston Delivers New Memory Alternative

The technology will allow the company to reduce production delays and pricing volatility stemming from third-party chip stacking, said Kingston executives.

The new modules, which use technology referred to by Kingston as Elevated Package Over Chip (EPOC), call for building DRAM chips in a different way,by mounting them in different packages in two overlapping rows on a printed circuit board.

Kingston's module rollout, which coincides with some recent turbulence in the memory space,including a federal antitrust investigation of the industry itself and on-again, off-again merger talks between rivals Hynix and Micron,is clearly aimed at winning the vendor new business, said sources.

Already, though, Fountain Valley, Calif.-based Kingston has earned itself a good reputation among white-box builders.

"It's amazing the [increase in repeat business we've seen since we started putting Kingston [memory in [our machines," said Sean McClelland, president of 1U-rackmount-servers.com, a Carlsbad, Calif.-based builder of ultradense white-box systems.

Kingston does, however, have a reputation for charging more for its products, but that isn't an issue for McClelland, who feels the vendor's technology justifies higher prices.

In Kingston's new design, the top tier is a row of raised Thin-Small Outline Package memory, while the lower tier is a row of smaller chip scale package memory. There's no physical contact between the overlapping rows, and because of that, airflow between the tiers allows for better heat dissipation, according to the company.

Kingston executives said they had three primary goals in mind when researching and developing the EPOC technology: shortening lead times, making it easier to build standard modules and enhancing thermal performance.

Shipment delays not only affect future orders but can be detrimental when memory pricing is in flux,a near-constant situation in the memory market for a number of years now.

A sister company to Kingston, Payton Technology, which has expertise in specialty chip packaging, helped Kingston with the research and design of the EPOC technology.