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| IM ECC DRAM |
Hong Kong – Intelligent Memory wants to solve your DRAM hang-ups bit by bit. Often times without our realization, applications suffer from some level of memory failure on nearly a daily basis. We’ve all experienced these DRAM soft errors before; our smart phone touch screen won’t respond, our Wi-Fi routers quit, our in car navigation suddenly stops navigating and re-boots, or we end up facing down the dreaded ‘blue screen’ of death on our PC’s and laptops. On HDD or SSD drives, which use DRAM as a cache or write-buffer, memory bit-flips can be the root-cause for corrupted files or directory-entries.
Each of these cases represent some form of soft error or bit flip. We think of these daily failures as minor inconveniences and ‘hiccups’ in our technology filled lives, and we’ve become accustomed to simply pushing a reset button, or switching off and starting again. But what if that didn’t have to be the case?
In the world of high powered servers that drive the digital universe around us, these failures are guarded against with some form of error correction coding, otherwise known as ECC. ECC functionality is built into the processors that populate the servers that drive our high reliability technology infrastructure on a grand scale. To store the additional bits required for the parity-information, the processor requires special server memory modules with a wider data-bus having a 72 bits width where 64 bits are for the data, and 8 bits accomodate the parity information. The server processor and memory combination work together to correct any errors, seen or or unseen, without service interruption.
So how can we build this level of reliability into our industrial electronics, embedded devices and single board computers?
Unfortunately, the majority of industrial electronics use CPUs, FPGAs and controllers that have no ECC capabilities. Additionally, small form factor devices do not have enough physical board-space to accomodate the vast amount of DRAM memory components required for the wider bit-widths used in ECC. Another difference between consumer, server, and an industrial devices are found in the extended temperature requirements and specialty form factors used for ruggedized electronics.
Reality is that the same DRAM components used in consumer devices are also designed into high-end industrial devices, although the expectations for quality, reliability and availability of the target markets differ greatly.
Embedded/Industrial devices are expected not to fail, regardless of whether they run like a server 24/7 inside an access control device, traffic system, ATM or ticket machine, or if they are only used for eight to ten hours a day in a point of sale unit, industrial automation system or automotive device.
Intelligent Memory presents a solution to make any application as reliable as a server with their new Integrated Error Correcting (ECC) DRAM components. I’M ECC DRAM ICs perform the ECC error correction within the DRAM chip itself, independent of the processor driving the application. This allows ECC levels of reliability in nearly all applications without extra DRAM chip or processor requirements, and independent of hardware or software changes.
Intelligent Memory ECC DRAMs are available in JEDEC compatible package across technologies such as DDR1, DDR2, DDR3, and LPDDR, and are drop in replacements for existing DRAM technologies already designed in.
If your application utilizes memory modules instead of on-board DRAM, Intelligent Memory provides module solutions to meet the need as well. Nearly all memory modules can be built with ECC DRAMs in DIMM, SO-DIMM, and other popular form-factors. The results are 64 bit wide ‘Non-ECC’ modules that benefit from the use of integrated ECC chips to attain a higher reliability than 72 bit server ECC module with each ECC DRAM chip on the module performing its own separate error correction.
For more information on how Intelligent Memory ECC DRAM can improve your application, please visit www.intelligentmemory.com