Samsung on Wednesday announced it has started mass production of a notebook memory module about half the size of a conventional notebook module, a design change intended to appeal to manufacturers of Centrino notebooks.
Centrino is a collection of chips produced by Intel for wireless notebooks, which in general are relatively light and thin. Samsung"s module can hold up to 1GB of memory, the company said.
The new modules, fabricated with 0.1-micron processing technology, feature 200 pins and measure 67.60mm wide by 31.75mm long by 3.80mm high. Samsung has developed a lightweight (0.28g) sTSOP (shrink Thin Small Outline Package) for SODIMMs that is only 134mm2 (11.76mm by 11.4mm). Half the size of conventional packages, the sTSOP uses a copper lead frame that suppresses heat generation during memory operation. This design is ideal for notebook PCs, which do not come with a heat-dispersing fan.