Toshiba, Elpida To Make Superfast Memory Chips For Home Networking Market

The two Japanese companies will separately make the new chip, called XDR DRAM, using technology by Rambus Inc., based in Los Altos, Calif.

A sample of the chip will be produced next year and head into full-scale production in 2005, Toshiba spokesman Makoto Yasuda said Friday.

The new chip, running at 3.2 gigahertz, will be able to handle large amounts of video data and may be used in home network servers, mobile systems and next-generation video game machines, including the successor to Sony PlayStation2.

"Keeping up with ever-increasing bandwidth requirements is a critical element of memory system design," said Hidemori Inakai, chief marketing officer for Elpida Memory, a joint venture between Japanese electronics giants Hitachi and NEC Corp.