Samsung: DDR3 will be mainstream by early 2009

Samsung Electronics, the world's largest memory maker, expects DDR3 (double data rate, third-generation) memory chips to eclipse DDR2 (second generation) as the mainstream DRAM technology for PCs by early 2009, a senior executive said Monday.

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DDR3 offers faster performance and lower power consumption than DDR2. The first desktop PCs using DDR3 will hit the market during the second half of next year, said Tae-Sung Jung, the senior vice president of Samsung's memory division, speaking to reporters at a conference in Singapore.

In less than two years, DDR3 will become the most common type of DRAM found in PCs, Jung said. "The DDR3 major crossover will happen in late 2008 or 2009, depending on the rate of industry adoption and cost reductions," he said.

Samsung is bullish on demand for DRAM, which it says will remain high next year due to the introduction of game consoles like Sony Computer Entertainment's PlayStation 3 and the upcoming release of Microsoft's Vista operating system. Computers running Vista will require more DRAM than systems running its predecessor, Windows XP.

Vista's need for memory is pushing customers to ship more memory with each PC, from 800MB per system now to around 1.2GB next year, said Woo-Sik Chu, Samsung's senior vice president of investor relations.