Rambus Expands Industry-Leading Memory Interface Chip Offering to High-Performance PCs with DDR5 Client Clock Driver

[TheLostSwede]

Rambus Inc., a premier chip and silicon IP provider making data faster and safer, today announced the availability of its DDR5 Client Clock Driver (CKD) for next-generation, high-performance desktops and notebooks. The Rambus DDR5 CKD and SPD Hub are part of a new client memory interface chip product offering that brings server technology advancements to the client market. Leveraging over 30 years of memory system expertise, the Rambus DDR5 CKD enables new client DIMMs (CSODIMMs and CUDIMMs) to operate at state-of-the-art data rates of up to 7200 Megatransfers per second (MT/s), and deliver breakthrough performance in next-generation PCs.

"As advanced technologies first developed for the data center proliferate to the client space, increasingly powerful PCs will take gaming, content creation and AI to new levels," said Rami Sethi, SVP and general manager of Memory Interface Chips at Rambus. "This new DDR5 Client Clock Driver is the latest addition to our growing line up of chip solutions that enable breakthrough memory performance across the computing landscape, and bring more value to our customers."




In addition to the CKD, Rambus DDR5 memory interface chips include Gen 1 to Gen 4 RCDs, Power Management ICs (PMICs), Serial Presence Detect (SPD) Hubs and Temperature Sensors for leading-edge servers. As data rates continue to rise, signal integrity (SI) and power integrity (PI) management become increasingly vital. With over 30 years of high-performance memory experience, Rambus is renowned for its SI/PI expertise. This expertise helps enable DDR5 memory interface chips to deliver superior signal integrity and power efficiency at higher yield for server and client DIMMs.

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[Chaitanya]

Atleast when it comes to SODIMM timing couldnt have been worse as Qualcomm, Intel and AMD all have killed support for expandable memory on their latest mobile platforms. Also interesting to see RAMBUS still in business.

 

[randomTPUreader]

Not sure why this is news, DD5 CKD's are nothing new. As an example you can easily find the data sheet for the Renesas RG5C172B0C0GBX from January 2023 that have the same specs as this RAMBUS one. If anything RAMBUS is 18 months behind their competition on this.

 

[Wirko]

Not sure why this is news, DD5 CKD's are nothing new. As an example you can easily find the data sheet for the Renesas RG5C172B0C0GBX from January 2023 that have the same specs as this RAMBUS one. If anything RAMBUS is 18 months behind their competition on this.

In this form and shape, DDR5 CKDs are new. It's partial buffering on ontherwise unbuffered memory modules, which are then called CUDIMM and should be compatible with processors that require unbuffered memory. Here's a bit more from AnandTech:

All told, placing clock drivers in DIMMs isn't a new idea; the CUDIMM concept is largely a scaled-down version of the Registered DIMM (RDIMM), which has been used in servers for years and is the only type of DDR5 DIMM that Intel and AMD's server (and workstation) chips support. But whereas RDIMMs are a more expansive solution that buffers the command and address busses alongside the clock signal, CUDIMMs buffer only the clock signal and leave everything else untouched. In that context, CUDIMMs are essentially a half-step to RDIMMs.

 

[R0H1T]

Atleast when it comes to SODIMM timing couldnt have been worse as Qualcomm, Intel and AMD all have killed support for expandable memory on their latest mobile platforms.

They haven't, at least Intel/AMD will always have expandable memory support ~

System Memory TypeDDR5 (FP8) , LPDDR5X (FP8)
Memory Channels 2
Max. Memory 256 GB
Max Memory Speed
4x2R
DDR5-5600, LPDDR5x-7500

https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/laptop/ryzen/300-series/amd-ryzen-ai-9-hx-370.html