Intel began as a memory supplier. The PC industry faces its most dire memory crunch in years, if not decades. So it makes sense for Intel to move back into PC memory, right?
Sort of. Intel said this week that it is indeed working on a new memory technology, called Z-Angle Memory, or ZAM, with a Softbank-backed startup called Saimemory. It’s not so much a new type of memory, but rather a new way of building memory, and one that should be familiar to Intel watchers.
As the name suggests, ZAM is tied to “Z height,” the way in which the thickness of various objects are described in the tech world. ZAM is a way to stack RAM on top of one another, increasing the available memory density for anything that needs DRAM, presumably from laptops to servers. The goal is to reduce power consumption and increase the amount of memory in a given volume, via what Intel calls Next-Generation DRAM Bonding, or NGDB.
It also could be used as a high-bandwidth alternative to HBM, or high-bandwidth memory, which AMD began using in Radeon GPU chips beginning in 2015. High-speed memory is a critical building block of AI servers, too.
Although Intel hasn’t described in detail what NGDB can do, the company developed what’s known as the Foveros technology, first announcing it in 2018. Foveros took Intel’s EMIB technology and extended it vertically, allowing the company to stack logic chips on top of one another, or mount memory over logic as well. Now, Intel is mounting memory over memory in the new venture. Saimemory’s contribution builds on foundational work supported by the Advanced Memory Technology (AMT) R&D Program, managed by the U.S. Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration through the Sandia National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory, the companies said in a press release.
Saimemory will commercialize (sell) the product, while Intel will provide the technology. The company’s manufacturing operations will begin this quarter, and prototypes are scheduled for 2027. The roadmap calls for ZAM to actually begin selling in 2030.
Intel was founded in 1968 as a memory company, making SRAM and DRAM. Though it created the first microprocessor, the 4004, the company sold DRAM through the 1970s before pivoting to become a microprocessor supplier. With AI hyperscalers snapping up as much memory and storage as they can, however, knowing how to use whatever memory is available as effectively as possible might not be such a bad idea. After all, the great memory shortage could last for years.
