Posted on Thursday, January 18 2018 @ 10:21 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Samsung kicked off mass production of world's first 16Gb GDDR6 memory chips! The 2GB GDDR6 memory runs at 1.35V, it's made on a 10nm-class process and offers a bandwidth of 18Gbps. The chips offer data transfer rates of 72GB/s, twice as much as 8Gb GDDR5 with a 8Gbps speed. Basically, this further reduces the need for HBM2 for high-end video cards.
Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has started mass production of the industry’s first 16-gigabit (Gb) Graphics Double Data Rate 6 (GDDR6) memory for use in advanced graphics processing for gaming devices and graphics cards as well as automotive, network and artificial intelligence systems.
“Beginning with this early production of the industry’s first 16Gb GDDR6, we will offer a comprehensive graphics DRAM line-up, with the highest performance and densities, in a very timely manner,” said Jinman Han, senior vice president, Memory Product Planning & Application Engineering at Samsung Electronics. “By introducing next-generation GDDR6 products, we will strengthen our presence in the gaming and graphics card markets and accommodate the growing need for advanced graphics memory in automotive and network systems.
Built on Samsung’s advanced 10-nanomter (nm) class* process technology, the new GDDR6 memory comes in a 16Gb density, which doubles that of the company’s 20-nanometer 8Gb GDDR5 memory. The new solution performs at an 18-gigabits-per-second (Gbps) pin speed with data transfers of 72 gigabytes per second (GBps), which represents a more than two-fold increase over 8Gb GDDR5 with its 8Gbps pin speed.
Using an innovative, low-power circuit design, the new GDDR6 operates at 1.35V to lower energy consumption approximately 35 percent over the widely used GDDR5 at 1.55V. The 10nm-class 16Gb GDDR6 also brings about a 30 percent manufacturing productivity gain compared to the 20nm 8Gb GDDR5.
Samsung’s immediate production of GDDR6 will play a critical role in early launches of next-generation graphics cards and systems. With all of its improvements in density, performance and energy efficiency, the 16Gb GDDR6 will be widely used in rapidly growing fields such as 8K Ultra HD video processing, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence.
With extensive graphics memory lineups including the new 18Gbps 16Gb GDDR6 and recently introduced 2.4Gbps 8GB HBM2, Samsung expects to dramatically accelerate growth of premium memory market over the next several years.
