Samsung Electronics, the world's largest memory chip maker, said this week that the global shift to a speedier computer memory chip, DDR2 (double data rate, second generation), is accelerating, and that the chips finally account for the majority of its factory output of DRAM (dynamic-RAM).

The DDR2 chips were supposed to take over as the world's most widely used PC memory chip last year, but high prices, the marginal performance boost they offer compared to existing DDR chips, and other factors caused the timeframe to be pushed back, analysts say. In the interim, the original DDR chips, running at 400 MHz, or DDR-400, have remained the most popular memory for PCs.

Industry attention to the Flash memory market has also held back DDR2, some observers argue.

NAND Flash memory chips stole the spotlight this year because people have been snapping up the main products they end up in--digital cameras and MP3 players, said Min-Liang Chen, chairman of ProMOS Technologies, a Taiwanese memory chip maker, during a news conference last week.

"DDR2 won't be that big this quarter," he said. "It won't become the mainstream chip until the fourth quarter at the earliest."