Samsung set to debut the world’s fastest GDDR7 memory next month

Samsung’s ready to boost memory performance and efficiency with their upcoming GDDR7 memory modules

According to Tech Radar, Samsung are getting ready to showcase their fastest GDDR7 memory modules at the 2024 IEEE International Solid-State Circuit Conference. This conference will be hosted in February. There, Samsung are leading a session called “A 16Gb 37 Gb/s GDDR7 DRAM with PAM3-Optimized TRX Equalization and ZQ Calibration”.

With 37 Gbps speeds, Samsung’s new GDDR7 memory is over 54% faster than Samsung’s fastest (24Gbps) GDDR6 memory. Right now, the fastest GDDR6 memory in a GPU is the 20 Gbps GDDR6 memory on AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 XTX. Samsung’s 37 Gbps GDDR7 memory is 85% faster than the memory on AMD’s RDNA 3 flagship GPU.

The Benefits of Samsung GDDR7 memory

Samsung’s new GDDR7 memory modules have the potential to transform the GPU market. Using the same 384-bit memory buses as GPUs like Nvidia’s RTX 4090 or AMD’s RX 7900 XTX, Samsung’s new GDDR7 memory modules can deliver over 1.75 terabytes per second (TBps) of memory bandwidth. GDDR7 will help power up the next generation of consoles, graphics cards, and workstations by offering more bandwidth to users. Additionally, these new GDDR7 modules are more energy efficient than today’s GDDR6/GDDR6X memory modules.

One of GDDR7’s main improvements over GDDR6 is its use of Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM3) signaling method instead of the Non Return to Zero (NRZ) signalling method of previous generations. PAM3 signalling allows 50% more data to be transmitted than NRZ within the same signalling cycle. This enables the bandwidth increase of GDDR7.

Another change that Samsung has made to their GDDR7 modules is to use a new epoxy moulding compound (EMC). This compound features a higher thermal conductivity to enable more efficient heat transfer from DRAM chips to connected heatsink solutions. This change has decreased GDDR7’s thermal resistance by 70% over GDDR6, making GDDR6 memory easier to cool effectively.

Samsung are not the only memory manufacturer to be working on GDDR7 memory. It will be interesting to see if their competitors can deliver GDDR7 memory that is as fast, or faster, than what Samsung’s offering.

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