MULTIMEDIA IN THE BEACH BAG: INFINEON ENABLES PDAS TO BECOME ENTERTAINMENT CENTERS
(Ybreo PR)- Lugging around books, CDs, and batteries, writing postcards and glueing stamps during the best weeks of the year could very well soon become a thing of the past, thanks to technology know-how from Infineon. A 256-Mbit memory which is now being shipped to manufacturers will make the PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) much more of a multimedia tool. Since this chip has twice the capacity and half the size of comparable products, manufacturers of PDAs will soon be able to integrate more complex applications: listening to MP3s, reading eBooks, surfing the Internet, calling the loved ones at home, playing video games, making digital pictures and of course e-mailing greetings. And the real beauty is that, with the power consumption cut in half, the battery will still be good when people on the beach watch the last rays of the sun disappear behind the horizon.
More performance - less power consumption
The 256-Mbit Mobile RAM is not only suited for PDAs but also for all mobile devices where low power consumption is critical: handhelds, next-generation mobile phones, digital cameras, and Web pads. The memory requires only about half the energy of conventional DRAMs for mobile applications, significantly extending the battery life. This is achieved through a power management that is built into the memory chip.
A DRAM must regularly refresh its entire memory, even in stand-by mode, which will continuously require power. With the solution from Infineon, these refreshes only take place in the memory cells where data are actually stored. The refresh rate in the Infineon chip is also temperature-dependent: the lower the operating temperature, the lower is the refresh rate. This reduces the power consumption by more than 50 per cent, allowing longer use of the mobile device.
Never stop thinking - what the future will bring
Infineon will soon even release a Mobile RAM based on the same technology with a capacity of 512-Mbits which will allow manufacturers of portable devices to integrate more demanding applications. Infineon is also developing a special memory for mobile phones, a so-called CellularRAM, which supports services as MMS (multi media message) and i-mode (high speed data transfer). With this product, the company will particularly address the 2.5G and 3G mobile phone market. The expertise is already available: After all, every second GSM mobile phone today already contains an Infineon chip. More information about the Mobile RAMs from Infineon is available at www.infineon.com/mobile-ram.
About Infineon
Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany, offers semiconductor and system solutions for applications in the wired and wireless communications markets, for security systems and smartcards, for the automotive and industrial sectors, as well as memory products. With a global presence, Infineon operates in the US from San Jose, CA, in the Asia-Pacific region from Singapore and in Japan from Tokyo. In the fiscal year 2001 (ending September), the company achieved sales of Euro 5.67 billion with about 33,800 employees worldwide. Infineon is listed on the DAX index of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: IFX). Further information is available at www.infineon.com
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