The quest for more power often turns into a quest for less - the smaller a chip is, the less power it draws. The less power means less heat, which can mean higher speeds to reach the same heat the previous chip was.
This constant effort is the R&D fuel for everything from Quad-SLI down to the 7900 GO mobile graphics, and it just got a new boost. Nvidia and TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation) have now successfully manufactured
a 65nm processor with embedded DRAM.
The chips were designed with the intention of the mobile market, allowing Nvidia to embed more graphics RAM into chipsets without further draining the battery or using more space. Of course, it comes with several other die-shrink benefits including lower heat and (best of all) cheaper chips. The move is Nvidia's first run on TSMC's 65nm process, which will eventually handle much more complex tasks like full desktop graphics processors.
Of course, a good embedded-DRAM chipset has many other great target markets including gaming consoles, multimedia consumer electronics, and other machines that don't have a lot of room for separate, discrete RAM. Hopefully, we'll see the benefits of this move start to push out through the market soon. With a little time and luck, your cell phone could soon bear an Nvidia logo.
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