New contender appears in memory battle

The struggle still isn't over between two designs for high-speed memory--Rambus and double data rate (DDR)--but already the battle lines are being drawn for the next generation. Kentron Technologies is demonstrating what it calls Quad Band Memory.

The standard uses two banks of DDR operating in parallel, Kentron said. By timing electrical signals carefully, four bits of data can be transferred in each clock cycle. The technology will be useful for servers and network equipment, the company said.