Samsung's GDDR6 memory is shaping up to be faster than expected

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Tweaking the next generation of graphics memory.

Samsung is already collecting CES awards ahead of the annual of trade show, and one of those awards is for its 16Gbps GDDR6 memory. Apparently Samsung has been busy speeding up its graphics memory in the past year.

Back at the Hot Chips symposium in August 2016, Samsung executive Jin Kim said the company's GDDR6 memory will be faster and more power efficient than 10Gbps GDDR5, with throughput expected to be around 14Gbps when it starts mass production. Now a year later, Samsung has managed to bump that up to 16Gbps.

That is double the throughput of current generation 8Gbps GDDR5 memory found on graphics cards like the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, and higher than 11Gbps GDDR5X memory on the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti.

"It processes images and video at 16Gbps with 64GB/s data I/O bandwidth, which is equivalent to transferring approximately 12 full-HD DVDs (5GB equivalent) per second," Samsung said.

Samsung also says its GDDR6 memory uses less power, operating at 1.35V versus 1.5V for 8Gbps GDDR5 memory. That means less power will be needed for the memory subsystem.

Faster and more power efficient memory is one of the keys to advancing graphics performance, especially as VR and more demanding games put increasingly heavy loads on GPUs. If Samsung is still on its same timeline as before, GDDR6 memory will arrive next year

Paul Lilly
Paul Lilly

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).