The aim of the $52 million development effort is to have a product ready for mass production by the end of the decade.
SoftBank will contribute $20 million to Saimemory. Fujitsu and Japan’s Riken National Research Institute will contribute $7 million. The Japanese government is also expected to subsidise part of the cost.
Saimemory aims to develop memory with storage capacity 2x to 3x that of HBM and half the power consumption at a comparable or lower price.
It will use IP and patents from Intel and Tokyo University. Shinko Electric Industries and Powerchip Semiconductor are contributing manufacturing and prototyping. Intel will provide the stacking technology developed with DARPA funding.
Saimemory’s approach is to stack standard DRAM die using novel interconnection techniques.
Another company pursuing the same approach is NEO Semiconductor while, last week, Nvidia paid Groq $20 billion for AI inferencing IC technology which eliminates the need for HBM.
