Samsung develops world’s fastest graphics DRAM chip

Samsung Electronics Co. on Thursday unveiled a sample of the industry’s fastest graphics DRAM, designed to significantly advance the graphics performance and extend the battery life.

The 24Gbps GDDR6, developed by the world's top memory chipmaker, will deliver 30% faster speeds than the previous 18Gbps (gigabit-per-second) model, Samsung said. A gigabit is equal to one billion bits and GDDR stands for graphics double data rate.

When integrated into a premium graphics card, the latest graphics DRAM can transfer up to 1.1-terabytes of data, or download about 275 full high-definition movies in just one second. A terabyte is about 1 trillion bytes.

“The explosion of data now being driven by AI and the metaverse is pushing the need for greater graphics capabilities that can process massive data sets simultaneously, at extremely high speeds,” Daniel Lee, a Samsung Electronics executive vice president, said in a statement.

“With our industry-first 24Gbps GDDR6 now sampling, we look forward to validating the graphics DRAM on next-generation GPU platforms to bring it to market in time.”

The next-generation graphics memory chip will likely be applied to graphics cards, playback videos, laptops and game consoles. It will likely be adopted in artificial intelligence-based applications, high-performance computing systems, electric vehicles and autonomous driving as well.

The latest graphics DRAM is based on the third-generation 10-nanometer processing node with a 16-gigabit capacity and built on the EUV lithography technology.

Compliant with the latest GDDR industry standard, Samsung’s GDDR6 will be compatible across all GPU designs for broad market adoption.

It will commercialize the 24Gbps GDDR6 DRAM in tandem with the launches of high-capacity GPU platforms.

The high-performance graphics segment of the graphics DRAM market worldwide is forecast to grow by double digits annually in the coming years, Samsung said.

Samsung commanded 38.9% of the world’s graphics DRAM market in 2021, trailed by Micron Technology Inc. with a 33.3% stake and SK Hynix Inc. with a 27.8% stake, according to research firm Omdia.

Write to Shin-Young Park at nyusu@hankyung.com
Yeonhee Kim edited this article