The early shipments may be meant to foster interest in the RAM

Mar 5, 2013 14:43 GMT  ·  By

Until now, integrated graphics chips, whether they are part of motherboard chipsets or CPUs, have used DDR3 memory.

This may change once Advanced Micro Devices releases the Kaveri accelerated processing unit series.

The Radeon HD 7000 with Graphics CoreNext will supposedly support GDDR5 VRAM, like the memory used in high-end ad-in adapters, GTX Titan included.

More specifically, Kaveri will have a 128-bit GDDR5 memory controller.

The bad news is twofold. For one, GDDR5 needs point-to-point interconnection, meaning the Kaveri will need a BGA package (will be stuck to the motherboard). Laptops won't have a problem there.

The other issue is that 2 Gb is the largest capacity of GDDR chips, which means that notebooks could be limited to 4 GB, not enough for modern PCs.