Samsung Crosses The Line First On GDDR7 Release, Rated At 32Gbps
Samsung Crosses The Line First On GDDR7 Release, Rated At 32Gbps
After many years of development from various DRAM manufacturers, Samsung is the first one to announce the completion of development and officially introduces GDDR7 DRAM to the market. The company promises 20% efficiency improvements and maximum bandwidth of 1.5TB/s.
The most obvious beneficiary of the new DRAM technology would be GPUs as far as general consumers are concerned – and leaks so far has at least vaguely indicated that both AMD and NVIDIA’s upcoming architecture, RDNA4 and Blackwell respectively, will use some form of GDDR7. However, we’re still very far from both architecture releasing to the market, so things may and certainly will change at some point in the future.
Compared to traditional NRZ (Non Return to Zero) method, Samsung has utilized PAM3 signaling to pack higher bandwidth as PAM3 delivers three bits of data per cycle compared to standard NRZ signaling. The 1.5TB/s peak bandwidth brings 1.4x more bandwidth over standard GDDR6 at 1.1TB/s. It’s worth noting that Micron has used PAM4, which packs 4 bits, in GDDR6X modules seen in high-end NVIDIA RTX 30/40 GPUs.
The extra signaling meant heavier processing is needed to decode the data, and thus more heat generation. The company says a highly heat-conductive “epoxy molding compound” is used in the packaging material, on top of optimizing the chips itself for less heat concentration (hotspots). This reduces thermal resistance by 70% compared to GDDR6, which should help it deal with heat better than GDDR6X modules.
There’s also low-voltage versions available for low-power applications, such as laptops. The company expects applications in AI, HPC and automotive to utilize GDDR7, but it’s safe to say GPU is joining the club soon.
Pokdepinion: Perhaps it could bring a significant speed boost to all GPUs next-gen? We’ll see – the lack of capacity (in mid-range models) seems to be the main issue recently.
