Mobile DDR spurs low-cost, low-power automotive electronics designs

By Rich Chaney, Micron Technology
June 12, 2008 -- mobilehandsetdesignline.com

In the memory unfriendly automotive environment, designers are having to seek out more and different system memory solutions. Here's one of the newest.

There's no such thing as a one-size-fits all automotive memory solution. Rather, diverse and advanced automotive information and entertainment electronics have forced designers to seek out consistently more and different system memory solutions.

In many cases, system architects must strive to find the proper balance of durability, functional potency, power consumption, and price—weighing a variety of factors from BOM (bill of materials) costs to space limitations. Given this potential complexity, it's nice to know that, while no panacea exists, there are some simple and solid memory choices you can make.

In this article, we focus on one such choice, Mobile DDR (double data rate) SDRAM (synchronous dynamic random access memory) (Mobile DDR)—first looking at automotive temperature Mobile DDR, which is brand new to the market and makes Mobile DDR a lot more useful for automotive and other embedded applications. Then we'll examine Mobile DDR's low power consumption; its flexibility in terms of specifications, like density, physical form (stacking or configuration), and, finally, its long-term availability.

We will also look at a real-world example of where Mobile DDR is currently being used in Continental's module for the Ford Sync voice-activated infotainment/telematics system.

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