Hynix has joined in launches at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference with what's billed as the world's first 1-gigabit DDR3 RAM chip. The storage is equivalent to about 128MB and was achieved by using a new 44-nanometer manufacturing process that Hynix notes is about 50 percent more efficient than the old 54nm technique it replaces. Power consumption should also go down with the advancement in storage.

Bulk production of the first RAM sticks to use 44nm DDR3 should start in the summer. Hynix doesn't describe the nature of finished memory, though current RAM sticks are limited to 4GB and are often expensive in part due to the high costs of including a large number of individual memory chips.