GDDR6 is coming to high-end GPUs in early 2018

SK Hynix teases next-gen GDDR6 for next-gen graphics cards in early-2018.

Published
Updated
1 minute & 35 seconds read time

SK Hynix has just teased the world saying that they're pushing out their new GDDR6 RAM, with up to 16Gbps of bandwidth - a massive increase from the already huge 11Gbps available on the GDDR5X that NVIDIA has on its new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, and its refreshed GTX 1080 with 11Gbps.

GDDR6 is coming to high-end GPUs in early 2018 08

In the PR statement, SK Hynix said: "SK Hynix Inc.today introduced the world's fastest 2Znm 8Gb(Gigabit) GDDR6(Graphics DDR6) DRAM. The product operates with an I/O data rate of 16Gbps(Gigabits per second) per pin, which is the industry's fastest. With a forthcoming high-end graphics card of 384-bit I/Os, this DRAM processes up to 768GB(Gigabytes) of graphics data per second. SK Hynix has been planning to mass produce the product for a client to release high-end graphics card by early 2018 equipped with high performance GDDR6 DRAMs".

GDDR6 will be a replacement for GDDR5 and GDDR5X, with SK Hynix "collaborating with a core graphics chipset client to timely mass produce the GDDR6 for the upcoming market demands". I'd say that the core graphics chipset client is NVIDIA, and that their new GDDR6-based graphics cards that I talked about in this report on the purported GeForce GTX 20 series, led by the GTX 2080.

GDDR6 is coming to high-end GPUs in early 2018 09

Now, for the tech nuts - you'll notice that SK Hynix has the "world's fastest 2Znm 8Gb(Gigabit)" GDDR6 DRAM, and as you can see on the chart above, we've come a long way in 10 years.

NVIDIA could name the new cards as the GTX 11 series, but I think the large jump in performance will see them replacing the '1' of the GTX 10 series, with '2', and then '3', and so on. This would result in the Volta-based GDDR6/HBM2-based graphics cards as GTX 20 series, then GTX 30 series, and so on. Nothing is confirmed so far, but it would make sense. What do you think NVIDIA will call their new cards?

Anthony joined the TweakTown team in 2010 and has since reviewed 100s of graphics cards. Anthony is a long time PC enthusiast with a passion of hate for games built around consoles. FPS gaming since the pre-Quake days, where you were insulted if you used a mouse to aim, he has been addicted to gaming and hardware ever since. Working in IT retail for 10 years gave him great experience with custom-built PCs. His addiction to GPU tech is unwavering and has recently taken a keen interest in artificial intelligence (AI) hardware.

Newsletter Subscription

Related Tags