HiPEAC, a European network of almost 2,000 world-class computing systems researchers, named Dr. Matthias Jung (Fraunhofer IESE), Lukas Steiner and Norbert Wehn (TU Kaiserslautern) as winners of the prestigious Tech Transfer Award for their work on DRAMSys4.0.

“The work Fraunhofer IESE had done in building the initial version of DRAMSys4 is a good basis for meeting virtual prototyping challenges. However, certain fidelity, usability, and feature set gaps can only be uncovered in real world use,” says James Tringali, Technical Director at Rambus Inc. In cooperation with the US technology company, which is working in the field of memory systems, Fraunhofer IESE has optimized its simulation framework DRAMSys4.0. “With Rambus helping Fraunhofer IESE to identify and address these gaps, future versions of DRAMSys4 will become even more valuable to the technical community. The HiPEAC Technology Transfer Award is an affirmation of this value.”

DRAMSys4.0 is a flexible and fast DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) subsystem design exploration framework based on SystemC TLM-2.0. It is designed to address the challenges of different DRAM architectures with respect to applications, performance, power, temperature, and retention errors. DRAMSys can be expected to accelerate the design space exploration of memory systems, especially for the adoption of new memory standards, while reducing time-to-market compared to traditional RTL modeling.

“For Fraunhofer IESE and TUK, the cooperation with Rambus is an important partnership and a huge step towards a broader application and transfer of the DRAMSys tool in companies,” Tringali explains. “Rambus’ efforts to optimize DRAMSys4 will be part of an open-source roadmap that was established when Fraunhofer IESE initially released DRAMSys4. This is key for enabling customers to benefit from our highly vetted innovations and reproduce our results as desired. In this regard, Rambus is accentuating the ‘science’ in computer science.”

As a technology leader in the memory systems design space, says Tringali, Rambus understands and appreciates the critical importance of using high fidelity models to showcase innovations.

“At Rambus, we are well versed in the complex nature of memory system operations and their impacts on system level performance. In this regard, we understand what it takes to create a flexible, high- fidelity virtual prototyping platform,” Tringali concludes.

Visit DRAMSys4.0 to learn more or to discover more details about this notable award. Congratulations to the winners!