Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by n1 on Tuesday January 26 2016, @12:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the x-makes-it-better dept.

JEDEC has finalized the GDDR5X SGRAM specification:

The new technology is designed to improve bandwidth available to high-performance graphics processing units without fundamentally changing the memory architecture of graphics cards or memory technology itself, similar to other generations of GDDR, although these new specifications are arguably pushing the phyiscal[sic] limits of the technology and hardware in its current form. The GDDR5X SGRAM (synchronous graphics random access memory) standard is based on the GDDR5 technology introduced in 2007 and first used in 2008. The GDDR5X standard brings three key improvements to the well-established GDDR5: it increases data-rates by up to a factor of two, it improves energy efficiency of high-end memory, and it defines new capacities of memory chips to enable denser memory configurations of add-in graphics boards or other devices. What is very important for developers of chips and makers of graphics cards is that the GDDR5X should not require drastic changes to designs of graphics cards, and the general feature-set of GDDR5 remains unchanged (and hence why it is not being called GDDR6).

[...] The key improvement of the GDDR5X standard compared to the predecessor is its all-new 16n prefetch architecture, which enables up to 512 bit (64 Bytes) per array read or write access. By contrast, the GDDR5 technology features 8n prefetch architecture and can read or write up to 256 bit (32 Bytes) of data per cycle. Doubled prefetch and increased data transfer rates are expected to double effective memory bandwidth of GDDR5X sub-systems. However, actual performance of graphics cards will depend not just on DRAM architecture and frequencies, but also on memory controllers and applications. Therefore, we will need to test actual hardware to find out actual real-world benefits of the new memory.

What purpose does GDDR5X serve if superior 1st and 2nd generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) are around? GDDR5X memory will be cheaper than HBM and its use is more of an evolutionary than revolutionary change from existing GDDR5-based hardware.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 26 2016, @01:02AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 26 2016, @01:02AM (#294693)
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 26 2016, @02:09AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 26 2016, @02:09AM (#294728)

    This could allow a PS4 or a PS4-Server model with 500+ gigabytes/sec of memory bandwidth. If they fixed the PS4 design to include ECC support, it would make an extremely fast processing node for any number of applications.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday January 26 2016, @05:48AM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday January 26 2016, @05:48AM (#294808) Journal

      Microsoft and Sony may offer a "mid-cycle refresh" for the Xbox One and PS4 consoles. Now that they are using AMD x86 chips, they could move to an improved version for lower power consumption, but more importantly, better performance to meet the needs of 4K and VR.

      It's not like the hardware in these consoles is expensive anyway. But now that AMD is moving from the 28nm to the 14nm node, they could easily use a new 8-core chip with better capabilities. That's courtesy of the switch to x86.

      The console cycle has typically been around 6-7 years. But they may offer a significant upgrade 3-4 years in this time around. For PS4, that probably means supporting new 4K Blu-ray discs [soylentnews.org] with capacities of 66 GB and 100 GB. Sony will also want to push their version of a VR headset at the time of the console refresh.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]