Tom’s Hardware reports that Intel will demonstrate Hynix’s just announced 16GB 2-rank DDR3 DIMM at this year’s IDF. This comes on the heels of Elpida Memory’s 16GB FB-DIMM in DDR2 flavor that I covered a few weeks ago.

Hynix’s new DDR3 DIMM uses MetaRAM’s DDR3 MetaSDRAM technology letting manufacturers pack four times the amount of mainstream DRAM onto these sticks and still be a drop in solution, using the standard DIMM power and thermal envelope.

Intel will also demonstrate a server with 160GB using Hynix DDR3 R-DIMMs and Meta SDRAM technology in the Advanced Technology Zone.

DDR3 MetaRAM is similar to the previous generation of DDR2 technology that enables significantly more memory in a server. An added benefit of the DDR3 MetaRAM technology is that enables larger memory capacity without negatively impacting the operating frequency of the DDR3 memory channel. It is the only technology that has been demonstrated to run 24GB of DDR3 SDRAM in a channel at 1066 million transactions per-second (MT/s). Using 3 of 16GB DIMM, users can achieve 48GB per channel running at 1066 MT/s, while other competing solutions max out at 16GB per channel at 1066MT/s.

I thought we’d never have machines using Vista’s (Ultimate and Business) 128GB RAM limit in it’s lifetime, but perhaps there is hope! If you have deep pockets you could fill the average 4 slots in an enthusiasts machine with 64GB of RAM. It most likely would be overkill. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see what the performance stats would look like?