Tokyo, July 11: Electronics manufacturer Toshiba and chip maker Elpida memory plan to a produce memory chip for digital home appliances that they say will be eight times quicker than today's fastest chips. The chip, called XDR Dram, will be manufactured using technology by Rambus of the United States, the two Japanese companies said.

A sample of the chip will be produced in 2004 and it will be mass produced the following year, Toshiba spokesman Makoto Yasuda said today. The new chip running at 3.2 gigahertz will be able to handle large amounts of video data and could be used in home network servers, mobile systems and next-generation video game machines. Sony has said it plans to use the chip in the successor to its playstation2.

``Keeping up with ever-increasing bandwidth requirements is a critical element of memory system design,'' said Hidemori Inakai, chief marketing officer for Elpida memory, a joint venture between Japanese electronics giants Hitachi and Nec Corp. Bureau Report