Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced semiconductor memory technology, announced that in 2004 it shipped more than 15 million units of its Graphics Double Data-Rate (GDDR3) graphic memory, the fastest graphics memory available today.

Samsung GDDR3 now offers gamers, workstation users, designers and other graphics-oriented users unsurpassed system bandwidth of up to 44.8GBps. This represents a 48 percent increase in bandwidth over GDDR1.

Samsung's industry-leading combination of performance and density is enabling OEMs to offer computer-generated imaging that provides a virtually cinematic, photo-realistic experience. Samsung GDDR3 enables high-speed 256 MB and 512 MB graphics cards, as well as power-efficient 128 MB notebook solutions.

"As demand increases, we have the capacity to satisfy customer orders. Our GDDR3 memory is an essential component of high-end graphics environments, which many view as the primary driver in the proliferation of the high-end PC market well into the next decade," said Tom Quinn, Samsung Semiconductor senior vice president, memory sales and marketing.

"ATI has been proud to work closely with an industry leader like Samsung in the development of next-generation, high performance memory technologies and we congratulate them on their achievements with GDDR3," said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, PC Business Unit, ATI Technologies. "Samsung's GDDR3 is instrumental in our delivery of a high-definition visual experience and will only increase in importance as we drive hi-def technology to a broader audience."

"The use of Samsung GDDR3 allows us to provide our customers with the fastest graphics experience possible," said Tony Tamasi, vice president of technical marketing at NVIDIA. "As the highest volume user of GHz data rate GDDR3 memories, Samsung helps us deliver frame rates that no other memory comes close to permitting, to customers by the millions. We remain excited about the value that Samsung continues to deliver with GDDR3 technologies."

Samsung's GDDR3 8x32 graphics memory provides unsurpassed clock speeds of 500MHz to 700MHz as an alternative to the industry-standard GDDR1, which achieves clock speeds of up to 400MHz. It offers 56% higher performance than GDDR1. In addition, Samsung's GDDR3 requires a 1.8V voltage supply, much lower than today's prevalent 2.5V supply, resulting in more than acceptable power consumption to accompany its significantly higher performance.

As the industry's leading supplier of graphics memory, Samsung combines its application-specific engineering expertise and extensive customer support with high yields to offer OEMs an exceptionally strong value proposition.