Micron revealed late Wednesday that it plans to launch its first GDDR7 memory device in the first half of 2024. This memory is expected to be used in next-generation graphics cards and will deliver significantly higher performance than GDDR6 and GDDR6X.
“In the first half of calendar year 2024, we plan to introduce our next-generation G7 product with an industry-leading 1ß node.” Said Micron CEO Sanjay Melotra said as part of an earnings call.
Micron didn’t reveal any additional details about its GDDR7 SGRAM devices, which it plans to introduce in the first half of 2024, but some general things about the technology have already been revealed by Cadence and Cadence. samsung in the last few months.
Samsung expects the next-generation GDDR to reach data transfer speeds of 36 GT/s, but it’s unclear if they’re talking about initial speeds for the new memory. In any case, the increase over the current 22-23 GT/s offered by GDDR6X will make the new type of memory more desirable for bandwidth-hungry devices like high-end graphics cards. .
On the other hand, Cadence revealed that GDDR7 uses PAM3 signaling, i.e. 3-level pulse amplitude modulation (including -1, 0, +1 signaling levels) and can transfer 3 bits of data over 2 cycles. . . PAM3 is more efficient in its data transmission rate per cycle compared to the two-level NRZ used in GDDR6, thus reducing the need and potential for upgrading to higher memory interface clocks. Some signal loss issues are alleviated. Now GDDR6X does something similar to his PAM4 (4 states), so GDDR7 is still a bit different. PAM3 ends up sending slightly less data per clock (1.5 bits vs. 2 bits), but the trade-off is less stringent signal-to-noise ratio requirements.
Micron plans to announce its first GDDR7 products in the first half of 2024, but the official launch of the new memory device marks the end of development and will not be used in commercial products immediately. Since GDDR7 employs a new encoding mechanism, it requires a completely new memory controller, namely a graphics processor. While it’s reasonable to expect AMD, Intel and NVIDIA to announce their next-generation GPUs sometime between 2024-2025, the exact timing of the release of these graphics processors remains completely unknown.
Currently, Cadence offers a GDDR7 verification solution for chip designers who need to ensure controllers and PHYs adhere to the following specifications when finalizing designs for GPUs and other processors: doing.
