ULSI MEMORY FOR MULTIMEDIA APPLICATIONS

At the beginning of the 21st century, 1 Gb DRAMs will be in practical use, and sufficient in terms of memory capacity for most memory applic ation systems. The key technologies for multimedia systems include dat a compression, communication, storage, and human interfaces. Image dat a processing, ATM sn;itch, and microprocessor in multimedia applicatio ns require the high data transfer rate from several 100 Mbits/s to Tbi ts/s. Storage systems, on the other hand, require the reduction of the price per bit to less than 10 cents/Mbytes. Application specific desi gn approaches towards a system-on-chip are strongly needed for ULSI me mories in the multimedia era.