Micron will begin mass production gddr5x memory this summer
Memory manufacturer Micron announces that it will start mass production of gddr5x memory for video cards this summer. With early test versions of the chips, Micron currently claims speeds of 13Gb/s.
The first generation gddr5x memory chips that Micron will produce on a 20nm process has a capacity of 8Gb, or one gigabyte. Current gddr5 chips have a maximum capacity of 4Gb, although Samsung has already started making 8Gb gddr5 chips. However, Microns gddr5x is a lot faster than the gddr5 memory currently used on many video cards.
Recently standards organization Jedec determined that gddr5x memory should have a speed of 10 to 14Gbit/s. That’s double the speed of regular gddr5 memory. Micron writes that the first gddr5x chips have now been produced and that speeds of 13 Gbit/s have been achieved with the early chips. Compared to gddr5 memory, power consumption per bit sent is also improved, Micron says.
In October, information about Micron’s gddr5x chips came out. Slides showed that Micron initially aimed for a speed of 10 to 12Gbit/s with a maximum potential of 16Gbit/s. The first test chips therefore seem to be positive, given that the speed is already higher than the initially set target. It is not yet certain whether the first GPUs that use gddr5x actually use a speed of 13Gbit/s. In practice, the first generation of new memory chips is often tuned quite conservatively in terms of speed.
Micron says it is currently ramping up production of the gddr5x memory to have mass production underway in the summer. The manufacturer will announce later in the spring when samples of the chips will be sent to manufacturers. The first video cards with gddr5x memory may also appear on the market by then.
Samsung has already started mass production of the even faster hbm2 memory earlier this year, which, according to rumors, will be used by both AMD and Nvidia on high-end video cards. Presumably gddr5x will not end up on the fastest GPUs. It will probably be used initially on video cards in the sub-top and will later be used on midrange GPUs.