GoKawiilSAIMEMORY, a SoftBank Corp subsidiary in partnership with chip giant Intel, announced that Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) had selected its next-generation ZAM memory technology development project for government subsidies that may cover a huge part of the project's development costs.
ZAM (Z-Angle Memory) is a potential next-generation alternative to existing AI memory technology, which is designed to be a power-efficient HBM (high-bandwidth memory). It was selected as part of NEDO’s Post-5G Infrastructure Enhancement R&D Project.
This news is the latest development in a project shaped by US government-backed research, Intel’s internal R&D, and SoftBank’s push into AI infrastructure. It builds on earlier advances in memory stacking and interconnects from US-led research efforts, with Intel developing key DRAM stacking and bonding techniques that underpin what would become ZAM.
Article continues below
SoftBank later established SAIMEMORY in 2024 to commercialize such architectures, moving upstream into memory rather than relying on existing suppliers. Intel joined as a technical partner, while RIKEN supports evaluation and system-level integration.
(Image credit: Getty Images / Justin Sullivan)
In early 2025, we reported the Intel-SoftBank collaboration to develop a power-efficient HBM alternative for AI data centers through SoftBank's subsidiary, SAIMEMORY. More recently, we also covered Intel’s involvement in co-developing ZAM, a vertically oriented memory concept that promises higher capacity, greater bandwidth, and significantly lower power consumption compared to conventional approaches.
The driving force behind all of this is a growing constraint in AI systems: memory.
Modern AI workloads demand enormous data throughput between processors and memory. While GPUs have advanced rapidly, memory systems have struggled to keep pace. Today’s standard solution is high-bandwidth memory (HBM) — a form of DRAM (dynamic random access memory) that is vertically stacked and tightly integrated with processors to deliver high speeds.
Stay On the Cutting Edge: Get the Tom's Hardware Newsletter Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors
... continue reading