Friday, September 22nd 2017
Rambus Has DDR5 Memory Working in Its Labs, Gears for 2019 Market Release
DDR5, the natural successor to today's DDR4 memory that brings with double the bandwidth and density versus current generation DDR4. along with delivering improved channel efficiency, is expected to be available in the market starting 2019. JEDEC, the standards body responsible for the DDR specifications, says that base DDR5 frequencies should be at around DDR5-4800 - more than double that of base DDR4's 2133, but a stone throw away from today's fastest (and uber, kidney-like-expensive) 4600 MHz memory kits from the likes of G.Skill and Corsair.
DDR5 is expected to support data rates up to 6.4 Gb/s delivering 51.2 GB/s max, up from 3.2 Gb/s and 25.6 GB/s for today's DDR4. The new version will push the 64-bit link down to 1.1V and burst lengths to 16 bits from 1.2V and 8 bits. In addition, DDR5 lets voltage regulators ride on the memory card rather than the motherboard. CPU vendors are also expected to expand the number of DDR channels on their processors from 12 to 16, which could drive main memory sizes to 128 GB from 64 GB today. Whether this will be good for end-users in relation to DDR5 memory prices remains open for debate; however, considering the rampant memory prices this side of 2017, chances are it won't be unless supply increases considerably.On this, Rambus' vice president on product marketing, Hemant Dhulla, had this to say: ""To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to have functional DDR5 DIMM chip sets in the lab. We are expecting production in 2019, and we want to be first to market to help partners bring up the technology." On the time still ahead before market introduction of the technology, Dhulla said"(...) it's just a couple quarters, not a couple years…Everyone wants a fatter memory pipe."
Source:
EETimes
DDR5 is expected to support data rates up to 6.4 Gb/s delivering 51.2 GB/s max, up from 3.2 Gb/s and 25.6 GB/s for today's DDR4. The new version will push the 64-bit link down to 1.1V and burst lengths to 16 bits from 1.2V and 8 bits. In addition, DDR5 lets voltage regulators ride on the memory card rather than the motherboard. CPU vendors are also expected to expand the number of DDR channels on their processors from 12 to 16, which could drive main memory sizes to 128 GB from 64 GB today. Whether this will be good for end-users in relation to DDR5 memory prices remains open for debate; however, considering the rampant memory prices this side of 2017, chances are it won't be unless supply increases considerably.On this, Rambus' vice president on product marketing, Hemant Dhulla, had this to say: ""To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to have functional DDR5 DIMM chip sets in the lab. We are expecting production in 2019, and we want to be first to market to help partners bring up the technology." On the time still ahead before market introduction of the technology, Dhulla said"(...) it's just a couple quarters, not a couple years…Everyone wants a fatter memory pipe."
28 Comments on Rambus Has DDR5 Memory Working in Its Labs, Gears for 2019 Market Release
Just waiting on DDR4L for now....
My suggestions: either DIMMs half the size of current SO-DIMMs, or dual-channel DIMMs so that a single DIMM won't strangle your CPU and iGPU. Of course density would be an issue here, but what's stopping us from stacking RAM chips? Or just relying on process shrinks to shrink package sizes, with a new mounting standard to match? Of course higher density means more complex PCBs, but that ought to be par for the course at this point, and not something to really affect pricing.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quad_Data_Rate_SRAM
Out of all the hardware improvements for all devices & range of products (choices) available for each such as GPUs, motherboards, SSDs (from protocol, to socket type), etc, RAM still seems the most archaic in various ways. Hell, even ECC is still locked up, artificially market segmented. Those for example who want ECC AND performance for Threadripper are out of luck. You have to choose in a black or white manner since kits out now are utterly low end MHz wise; not even ONE black PCB in existence either.
Whats the point of a bigger pipe whwn we cant come close to saturatung what we have in most cases? ;)
I seem to recall Intel even got into that game, because they promised them that their "uber-ram" would be the ultimate evolution of pc memory for many many years to come. I think even Apple was interested in rambus at one point for the Mac Pro workstations (during the development of their massive G5 rigs), until they realized their claims were all smoke and mirrors and there was no way that they could ever produce anything reliably or profitably...
So sad to hear they even still exist, let alone trying to weasel themselves back into the arena again :(
apus performance increases flaten out with increased bandwidth. Lower voltage nobody really cares about, you think? They use a few watts...they dont run hot... etc. No. Why would the trend of higher speeds and looser timings change on the same technology?
Please read this article to understand in more details:
www.crucial.com/usa/en/memory-performance-speed-latency
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAS_latency#Memory_timing_examples
As you can see, the Speed and Clock Cycle time are the ones that matter, not CAS timings. The bigger the frequency, the lesser Clock Cycle time is.
true latency (ns) = clock cycle time (ns) x number of clock cycles (CL)
The latest DDR4-4000Mhz have a true latency of 8.911ns. ;)