The memory maker Rambus announced yesterday that it has started to develop a system that aims to give game consoles and personal computers no less than 1 Terabyte of bandwidth. The company has set a long-term plan to increase the bandwidth in computer chips to no less than 1 Terabyte per second because in our times speed means satisfaction.

Computers use memory chips such as dynamic RAM (DRAM) or Rambus’ own XDR RAM for holding data that is being worked on by the computer. This process becomes less time-consuming if the bandwidth is able to support high speeds for transferring data in and out of the memory chips.

Although 1 Terabyte per second might still be seen as huge bandwidth speed, the new multicore processors and graphics processors that have started to be released on the market are pushing memory chips to work even harder and thus to require more powerful bandwidth. So, although it might now be shocking, Rambus’ plan is in fact necessary.

The company said that from its point of view memory speeds would need to make a quantum leap in the next three to four years so that they could keep up with personal computers and game consoles running newer and faster and faster microprocessors.

Rambus called its plan the Terabyte Bandwidth Initiative; initially, the company aims to develop a single chip that will provide data speeds of 16 Gbits per second and then to create a chip bandwidth of 1 TB per second (1,024 Gbytes per second).