Micron announced Wednesday that it will launch its first GDDR7 memory chips in the first half of next year. The new type of memory promises to offer higher performance than GDDR6 and GDDR6X, but will require modern memory controllers and thus GPUs.
“In the first half of calendar year 2024, we plan to introduce our next-generation G7 product with an industry-leading 1ß node.” Said Sanjay Melotra, CEO of Micron, said:
GDDR7 SGRAM will be the next generation memory for GPUs used in some of the best graphics cards and other devices that need high bandwidth but don’t necessarily need expensive HBM3 memory. Samsung expects GDDR7 to offer data transfer speeds in the 36 GT/s range, but it remains to be seen when the new type of his SGRAM will offer this level of performance.
earlier this year Cadence Revealed that GDDR7 memory uses PAM3 signaling. This promises to boast higher bandwidth compared to GDDR6 (which uses PAM2 or NRZ encoding) without the complexity and higher power consumption imposed by GDDR6X (which uses PAM4 signaling). .
Note that formal introduction of a new type of memory does not necessarily mean immediate commercial adoption. Since GDDR7 uses a completely different encoding than his GDDR6 and GDDR6X, it will require a completely new memory controller, namely the GPU. While it’s logical to expect AMD, Intel, and Nvidia to announce their next-generation GPUs in 2024 or early 2025, who knows exactly when these graphics processors will ship? Only these three companies.
Cadence already has a GDDR7 verification solution, so adopters can ensure their controllers and physical interfaces will eventually comply with the GDDR7 specification.
