Samsung's New Next-Gen Gaming Graphics Is 'World's-Fastest DRAM'
Samsung has achieved another milestone in its Through Silicon Via (TSV) DRAM technology and another first in terms of new memory products. The South Korean company has announced that it has begun mass production of a new DRAM, which is "the world's fastest."
The first 4-GB DRAM uses second-generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM2) interface and features 256 GBps of bandwidth. This makes the new DRAM twice as fast as Samsung's previous HBM1 DRAM chips and more than seven times faster than the best DDR5 chips currently available in the market.
The latest DRAM offers faster performance for high-end computing tasks like parallel computing, graphics rendering, and machine learning. In addition, an embedded error-correcting code (ECC) makes it not only more power efficient but also more reliable.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Samsung is mainly targeting server manufacturers by marketing the DRAM for use in high-performance computing (HPC), advanced graphics and network systems, and enterprise servers. However, the new DRAM could also be used by other technology companies like NVIDIA and AMD as it will also significantly accelerate performance and reduce power consumption of new graphics cards, according to Endgadget.
In addition, making use of its 20-nm process, Samsung has created the DRAM chip to be compact enough to fit into a regular graphics card. To do this, Samsung stacked four layers of 8-GB cores in the 4-GB DRAM.
Samsung is also planning to introduce an 8-GB HBM2 DRAM by the end of the year. This version will have eight layers of 8-GB cores.
"By specifying 8GB HBM2 DRAM in graphics cards, designers will be able to enjoy a space savings of more than 95 percent, compared to using GDDR5 DRAM, offering more optimal solutions for compact devices that require high-level graphics computing capabilities," Samsung said in a press release.
This translates to more size-efficient cards that run faster and cooler, making games like "Crysis" run more smoothly, according to Engadget. The publication adds that the 4-GB DRAM chips could come with next-generation graphics cards, while the 8-GB DRAM chips could come with the more high-end workstation graphics like NVIDIA Kepler and AMD FIrePro.
