The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has asked Mitsubishi Electric’s U.S. unit for information regarding sales of static RAM (SRAM) chips in the United States, the Japanese company said Monday.Mitsubishi Electric & Electronics U.S.A. received a subpoena from the DoJ, the company said without providing any further information.SRAM is typically used as a memory buffer in devices such as computers and hard-disk drives. It can retain data as long as power is supplied. That puts it between dynamic RAM (DRAM), which retains data with power but requires refreshing, and flash memory, which retains data even when power is not supplied.The company’s SRAM business was spun off to Renesas Technology in 2003, and Mitsubishi currently holds a 45 percent stake in that company. The announcement comes less than a week after Cypress Semiconductor said it had been notified that the DoJ’s antitrust division will be launching an investigation into the SRAM market. The DoJ is already probing price fixing in the DRAM market, and Mitsubishi Electric was contacted in May this year regarding that investigation, it said at the time.The DRAM investigation has uncovered evidence of price fixing by major chip makers bidding for business with big U.S. computer makers including Dell, Apple Computer, Hewlett-Packard and IBM. Several DRAM makers have been ordered to pay fines as high as US$300 million, and three Samsung executives agreed to serve prison time for the part they played in the price fixing. -Martyn Williams, IDG News Service (Tokyo Bureau)Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage. Related content brandpost The steep cost of a poor data management strategy Without a data management strategy, organizations stall digital progress, often putting their business trajectory at risk. Here’s how to move forward. By Jay Limbasiya, Global AI, Analytics, & Data Management Business Development, Unstructured Data Solutions, Dell Technologies Jun 09, 2023 6 mins Data Management feature How Capital One delivers data governance at scale With hundreds of petabytes of data in operation, the bank has adopted a hybrid model and a ‘sloped governance’ framework to ensure its lines of business get the data they need in real-time. By Thor Olavsrud Jun 09, 2023 6 mins Data Governance Data Management feature Assessing the business risk of AI bias The lengths to which AI can be biased are still being understood. The potential damage is, therefore, a big priority as companies increasingly use various AI tools for decision-making. By Karin Lindstrom Jun 09, 2023 4 mins CIO Artificial Intelligence IT Leadership brandpost Rebalancing through Recalibration: CIOs Operationalizing Pandemic-era Innovation By Kamal Nath, CEO, Sify Technologies Jun 08, 2023 6 mins CIO Digital Transformation Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe