14 DAY TRIAL // Even though graphics cards do well enough when equipped with 2 GB of GDDR5 VRAM or so, high-end ones have come to possess 3 GB, 4 GB, 6 GB and even 12 GB. This calls for higher-capacity individual chips.
Samsung has just released the most advanced such chips, the first GDDR5 DRAMs with a capacity of 8 Gb, which is the same as 1 GB.
Twelve of these will easily allow NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce GTX Titan II (or Titan X, whatever it's called) to meet the implied capacity from reports.
Not that we know for certain that NVIDIA will be using this GDDR5 DRAM. Indeed, since the board has been in the making for a while, the company is probably using other semiconductors. That doesn't rule out future video board models though. Same for AMD cards.
Then there are GPU compute accelerators used in supercomputers. The new 8 Gb Samsung GDDR5 will do very well there indeed.
The Samsung 8 Gb GDDR5 DRAM
The newcomers have a data rate of 8 Gbps per pin (eight Gigabits per second), four times the speed of DDR3 DRAM.
Data can be processed at 32 bits (I/O rate). That means that two chips (2 GB capacity) can process up to 64 GB of graphics images per second.
By extension, this means that twelve full HD DVDs can be processed in a second (the equivalent of 5 GB).
You can probably see what a big deal this is. Even if NVIDIA and AMD decide to finally make video boards with independent 5K and 8K support, the new Samsung DRAMs will be able to keep up with the bandwidth needs.
You could even say the new 8 Gb / 1 GB Samsung GDDR5 DRAMs are ahead of their time. But you could probably argue that the same goes for every high-end video card in the world, especially dual-chip models.
Availability and pricing
Samsung is already shipping its 20nm 8 Gb GDDR5 DRAM chips to interested parties. Laptops and desktop PCs with even more overkill graphics will follow later this year, no doubt.
"We expect that our 8Gb GDDR5 will provide original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) with the best graphics memory solution available for game consoles as well as general use notebook PCs," said Joo Sun Choi, Executive Vice president of Memory Sales and Marketing at Samsung Electronics.
"By expanding our production of 20nm-based DRAM products including the new GDDR5, we will meet increasing global customer demand and take the lead in accelerating the growth of the premium memory market."