IBM and Micron Technology are beggining to produce a new memory chip to boost memory speeds by 15-times.

The companies disclosed the project today and said they will produce a commercially-manufactured Hybrid Memory Cubechip by Micron.

IBM will contribute by manufacturing and supplying the "controller" silicon that will be used in both the chip's memory and in its 3D technology, which is based upon through-silicon via (TSV) conduits that electrically connect a stack of individual chips. This will be used with Micron's dynamic random access memory.

Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) chips offer speeds of 128 gigabytes per second. By comparison, current state-of-the-art devices deliver 12.8GBps. The Cube also requires 70 percent less energy to transfer data while offering a more compact design--about 10 percent of the footprint of conventional memory, IBM said.

In a statement today, IBM said, "IBM's advanced TSV chipmaking process enables Micron's Hybrid Memory Cube to achieve speeds 15 times faster than today's technology."

The first devices (CPUs?) that will take advantage of the new Hybrid Memory Cube technology are expected to be available next year, but they are expected to find their way toward the consumer space by 2015. For now, the company will focus in offering the technology in networking and cloud computing devices such as 100-gigabit Ethernet routers.