Hynix on Wednesday boosted its Mobile Memory line and said it has developed the world's first two gigabit (256 megabyte) mobile RAM chip. The use of a smaller 54 nanometer manufacturing process has let the company double its previous best capacity while also improving the performance over past chips. Bandwidth for the outside world has been stepped up to 400 megabits per second, while the chip can process 1.6 gigabytes per second internally.

The breakthrough will be important for cellphones, portable media players, and other devices that depend on small and power-efficient memory. New classes of portable computers such as Mobile Internet Devices and ultra-mobile PCs should particularly benefit from the doubled RAM count, according to Hynix.

Mass production has been given a broad timeframe and should start sometime in the first half of 2009. Hynix hasn't named any particular customers for the new technology but supplies a large portion of the electronics industry.