Samsung joins Qimonda and Hynix in the GDDR5 race

[B3D News]

Samsung has announced the company's first GDDR5 chip, and while its capacity only reaches 512Mbit, its effective memory clock reaches an astonishing 6GHz (versus 2.4GHz for the GDDR4 on the Radeon HD3870). This news comes 2 weeks after Hynix's announcement, and one month after Qimonda's.

Read the full news item

 

[Tim Murray]

Mmmm doggy, that's some fast RAM! 128-bit bus for everybody!

 

[Jawed]

And in that market, 512MiB of memory just won't be enough - so you'd need 16 chips with 512Mbit memory, which is more expensive. Thus, 1Gbit chips might have an advantage in the market.

Don't forget clamshell:

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1085735&postcount=24

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1086223&postcount=38

which means Samsung's 512Mbit chips are not necessarily disadvantaged.

Jawed

 

[Arun]

Hmm, yes, there are advantages to clamshell - I'm not sure if it really reduces costs though? I mean, it's still 16 chips either way, so that ought to still be more expensive than 8 (larger) chips. Am I missing something here?

 

[Jawed]

Hmm, yes, there are advantages to clamshell - I'm not sure if it really reduces costs though? I mean, it's still 16 chips either way, so that ought to still be more expensive than 8 (larger) chips. Am I missing something here?

I interpret this as a cost reduction arising from the reduced pin count per chip for data, 16, instead of 32. Which makes routing, per chip, easier (which I presume means less circuit board layers).

The chips, themselves, will prolly cost the same for a given total board RAM size. So it's a question of board cost.

The more I think about clamshell, the more it seems like this would suit low-end or midrange cards. Where one circuit board is configured as 128/256 bit or 64/128 bit (i.e. XT and Pro SKUs).

Tricky subject...

Jawed