June 13, 2006 – Qimonda, the carved-out memory chip arm of Infineon Technologies, said it has won the business to supply graphics RAM for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 game console.

Under the deal, Qimonda will supply 512Mbit GDDR3 RAM, in a 136 ball, 11x14x1.2mm FBGA package. The Xbox incorporates eight GDDR3 16Mbit x32 components, each operating at a rated clock speed to achieve data bandwidth of up to 44.8Gbit/sec per memory device.

Infineon is targeting an August IPO in the US for its Qimonda unit, with particular emphasis on attracting investors in Asia and the US, according to a recent Die Welt story. Infineon head Wolfgang Ziebart has stated that profitability will be the number one goal after the spinoff.

Earlier this year, reports surfaced that production delays for the Xbox 360 were due at least in part to problems with Infineon memory chips, which were running slower than required and had to be weeded out of the supply by contract manufacturers, delaying assembly of the systems, noted a report in the San Jose Mercury News. Only one unified memory architecture connects the Xbox’s memory with the graphics chip and microprocessor, so slower memory access rates can cause the entire system to bog down, noted the SJNM‘s Dean Takahashi.