By Jason Sweeney

Los Altos high-tech powerhouse Rambus Inc. unveiled an innovation in chip technology April 4.

The company’s innovation should make exploding alien spacecraft and enemy orcs seem even more realistic on your Sony Playstation or personal computer.

The technology licensing company has developed a way to apply micro-threading to DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory chip) cores, according to a statement released by the company. Micro-threading is said to increase memory system efficiency by enabling DRAMs to provide more usable data bandwidth to requesting memory controllers.

“It’s the first time micro-threading has been applied to a DRAM core,” said Gabrielle Collier, a public relations representative for the company.

“By applying micro-threading to a DRAM core, we are continuing our tradition of innovation by designing and developing advanced technologies to improve the bandwidth between DRAMs and their associated memory controllers,” said Laura Stark, vice president of Platform Solutions at Rambus. “We look forward to working with our various DRAM partners to bring this exciting new technology to the market in high-volume applications.”

The company expects the new micro-threading technology to benefit end users by providing richer visuals in games and visualization software. The new technology is said to deliver up to a four times performance improvement in 3D graphics and other applications.

Los Altos resident, Craig Hampel, director of architecture, managed the company’s project to develop the new technology.

“Rambus has a long history of developing memory solutions for high performance games,” Hampel said. The company has developed memory solutions for the Nintendo 64, Playstation 2 and other Sony consumer electronics products, Hampel said.

“It’s an opportunity for us to provide technology that’s valuable for high performance 3D games and more realistic video creation,” Hampel said of the micro-threading technology. “We are currently actively working on memory technologies for Sony consumer electronic products,” he said.

Rambus was founded in 1990. The company does no manufacturing, earning its revenue from licensing the technology it develops to clients. Headquartered in Los Altos, Rambus has regional offices in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Bangalore, India; Taipei, Taiwan; and Tokyo, Japan. With over 200 employees and a market capitalization of $1.8 billion, Rambus is one of Los Altos’ largest companies.