Micron Technology, one of the leading memory makers in the world, announced it would support ATI’s initiative to use DDR2 memory at 667MHz in notebooks by validating specially designed modules with the graphics and core-logic company.

“ATI is pleased to work with an industry leader in memory technology such as Micron in the validation of DDR2 memory on our next generation PCI Express chipsets for Intel processors. Through supporting memory speeds up to DDR2 667MHz we can deliver highly versatile platform technology that can scale to meet the performance needs of our customers,” said Reuven Soraya, Director of Marketing, Chipset Business Unit, ATI Technologies.

Micron said it was in production with DDR2 PC2-5300 unbuffered, dual in-line memory modules (UDIMMs) in densities ranging from 256MB to 1GB  and small outline, dual in-line memory modules (SO-DIMMs) in densities ranging from 256MB to 512MB, supporting 4-slot desktop systems and 2-slot notebook systems, respectively.

Currently the only chipset for mobile computers to support DDR2 667MHz memory is ATI’s RADEON XPRESS 200M for Intel chips.

ATI’s RADEON XPRESS 200M graphics and memory controller hub (GMCH) for Intel processors supports Intel Pentium M, Intel Mobile Pentium 4 and Intel Celeron M central processing units with up to 533MHz processor system bus, dual-channel DDR or DDR2 memory controller at 400MHz and 667MHz respectively, built-in RADEON X300-like graphics core supporting DirectX 9.0 capabilities. The RADEON XPRESS 200M can be paired using PCI Express x4 bus with I/O controller from ATI Technologies or ULi Electronics.

While the feature-set and performance of ATI’s RADEON XPRESS 200M seems to be comparable or even higher to Intel’s 915GM-series of chipsets, the chipset received lukewarm welcome from computer builders: only 7 companies, including NEC, Asus, Quanta, Compal, Wistron, Mitac and LG, plan to utilize the core-logic. One of the possible reasons for that is the popularity of Intel Centrino brand-name among end-users. While the RADEON XPRESS 200M supports Intel Pentium M processor, notebooks using ATI’s chipset cannot be called Centrino because Intel allows to use the brand-name only for notebooks that use Intel’s processor, chipset and wireless network controllers.