Pat Gelsinger backs Nagare Labs’ Z2RAM bid to break the AI memory wall

Pat Gelsinger spent decades building chips at Intel. Now he is writing checks for the part of the chip that keeps AI waiting. Playground Global, where the former Intel CEO serves as a General Partner, is backing Nagare Labs, a startup developing an oxide semiconductor memory technology called Z2RAM. The pitch targets the “memory wall,” one of the more stubborn bottlenecks in modern AI hardware. Nagare Labs is promising a lot. As The Register put it, the road ahead is arduous and littered with the ruins of failed memory vendors. What Z2RAM claims to do Z2RAM aims to fix that by combining three traits that rarely show up in the same product. The startup is pitching SRAM-class bandwidth and latency, DRAM-class density, and manufacturing that looks more like NAND flash production. Each of those memory types is good at one thing and compromises on others. SRAM is very fast and sits close to the processor, but it takes up a lot of chip area. DRAM packs more data into less space, but it is slower. According to the research findings, Z2RAM is designed to use existing 300 mm manufacturing processes and to eliminate the need for capacitors and interposers. Conventional DRAM stores bits with ...