Samsung electronics announced that they have developed industry's fastest double-data-rate memory chip, the GDDR5, to transfer data at up to six gigabits per second rates. The new 512 MB GDDR5 chip is alleged to process data twice as fast as nowadays' technology, which would dramatically improve the gaming experience. Moreover, the GDDR5 standard can transmit moving images and associated data at 24 gigabytes per second.

"We're pushing image enhancement to a limit never before realized, enabling the smoothest, clearest animation that gamers have yet to experience," says Mueez Deen, marketing director for graphics memory at Samsung Semiconductor. "Samsung's 512Mb GDDR5 will enable the kind of graphics hardware performance that will spur software developers to deliver a new level of eye-popping games."

Samsung has already picked the 512 Mb (16Mb x 32) form factor for their manufacturing process and the memory chips are likely to enter mass production in the first half of 2007. Samsung boasts of the fact that their technology will become a true standard in the high-end computing segment, with more than 50 percent of the market share until 2010.

Samsung's graphics memory modules operate at 1.5 volts, which also brings a 20 percent improvement in power savings as compared to the actual GDDR3 standard. GDDR5 will also play an important role in the development of next-generation game consoles as well as high-definition video devices.

The new graphics chip line comes shortly after the Hynx competition have announced their one-gigabit GDDR5 graphics DRAM, that allegedly processes up to 20 gigabytes of data per second. Quimonda is another competitor that would joyfully taste a bite of the new market. The German company has already started shipping 12-megabyte GDDR5 samples to worldwide original equipment manufacturers, but process-related issues prevent them from starting mass-production before 2008.

"With the 'speed' advantage for Samsung and 'storage' merit for Hynix, the two companies are expected to have fierce competition in the DVD and game consoles sectors from the first half of next year," said a Hynix official.