New Members at Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium

The Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium (HMCC), led by Micron Technology, Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., announced that new members ARM Ltd., Hewlett-Packard Development company, L.P., and SK hynix, Inc. have joined the global effort to accelerate industry adoption of Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) technology.

The HMCC is a collaboration of OEMs, enablers and integrators who are cooperating to develop and implement an open interface standard for the innovative new memory technology.

Micron and Samsung, the initial developing members of the HMCC, are working closely with Altera, IBM, Microsoft, Open-Silicon, Xilinx and now ARM, HP and SK hynix, to draft an industry-wide specification that should pave the way for a range of electronic advances.

"The strong collection of companies who have joined the consortium – representing a broad range of technology interests – reflects the perceived high value of HMC as the next standard for high-performance memory applications," said Robert Feurle, Micron’s VP for DRAM marketing. "With the addition of ARM, HP and SK hynix as developers, who will help to determine the specific features, the consortium is well positioned to provide a new open standard for next-gen electronics."

HMC features will enable efficient memory solutions for applications ranging from industrial products to high-performance computing and large-scale networking. The HMCC’s team of developers plans to deliver a draft interface specification to the growing number of "adopters" joining the consortium. Then, the combined team of developers and adopters will refine the draft and release a final interface specification, currently targeted for the end of this year.

As envisioned, HMC capabilities will leap beyond current and near-term memory architectures in the areas of performance, packaging and power efficiencies, offering a major alternative to present memory technology.

One of the primary challenges facing the industry – and a key motivation for forming the HMCC – is that the memory bandwidth required by high-performance computers and next-generation networking equipment has increased beyond what conventional memory architectures can provide. The term "memory wall" has been used to describe this challenge. Breaking through the memory wall requires architecture such as HMC that can provide increased density and bandwidth with significantly lower power consumption.

Adopter membership in the HMCC is available to any company interested in joining the consortium and participating in the specification development. Already, the HMCC has responded to interest from more than 90 prospective adopters.

Founded by members of the world’s semiconductor community, the HMCC is dedicated to the development and establishment of an industry-standard interface specification for the Hybrid Memory Cube technology. Members of the consortium include Altera, ARM, HP, IBM,  SK hynix, Micron, Microsoft, Open-Silicon, Samsung, and Xilinx. More than 90 prospective adopters are exploring consortium membership.