Samsung has begun to produce what it believes is the world's fastest dynamic random access memory. The company confirmed this week that it has started to mass produce the 256 megabit eXtreme Data Rate (XDR) DRAM. XDR-DRAM is estimated to be some 10 times faster than the DDR-SDRAM that is in all likelihood sitting in your machine right now.

The new XDR is the fastest next-generation DRAM and can process data quantities equivalent to 500,000 newspapers or 10,000 books at the speed of 8GB per second. It will be used to run advanced multimedia devices such as game players, digital TVs, servers, and workstations to create higher definition images. Samsung also plans to produce during the first half of the year a 512 megabit XDR DRAM that can transmit data at the speed of 12.8 GB per second to lead the sophisticated DRAM chip market.