Cypress subsidiary claims ‘industry first’

The Agigaram system is said to deliver densities between 4MB and 2GB and peak transfer rates equivalent to DRAMs. It has been designed for systems such as storage, networking, communications, automotive and medical equipment. The system utilises a novel use of a battery free power sub system, with high speed synchronous DRAM, NAND Flash, power management and a proprietary system controller. During normal operation the Agigaram functions exactly like a synchronous DRAM (SDRAM). When power is lost, however, it automatically saves the data to NAND Flash using the energy stored in the power subsystem. When power is restored, the data is transferred back into the SDRAM. Available in two options – Bali and Capri – the first is targeted at general purpose, embedded and industrial applications, while the latter is aimed at higher end storage, industrial, networking, and communications applications. The Capri comes in sizes ranging from 256MB to 2GB and uses a higher speed DDR-800 interface. It also integrates a battery free power pack. AgigA Tech's director of objective analysis, Jim Handy, said: "Today's memory technologies all have a problem. DRAM is volatile, Flash is slow, SRAM with batteries is unreliable and alternative technologies are too costly to use in large densities. Products like AgigA Tech's that combine the best attributes of DRAM and NAND are likely to meet with broad acceptance."