SK hynix announces industry's best-performing GDDR7: scales to 40Gbps, ready for RTX 50 GPUs

SK hynix has just announced it has introduced the best-performing GDDR7, a next-generation graphics memory product at 32Gbps speeds.

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The South Korean company said that the development of GDDR7 in March comes amid "growing interest by global customers in the AI space in the DRAM product that meets both specialized performance for graphics processing and fast speed". SK hynix promised volume production of its new GDDR7 memory in Q3 2024.

SK hynix's new GDDR7 memory comes at an operating speed of 32Gbps, which is a whopping 60% improvement from the previous-gen GDDR6 standard, and GDDR7 can scale up to 40Gbps depending on the product. When used on a high-end graphics card, SK hynix's new GDDR7 memory is capable of over 1.5TB/sec of memory bandwidth, enough speed to transfer 300 x 1080p movies (at 5GB each) per second.

On top of the huge speed increases, SK hynix's new GDDR7 memory is also radically more power efficient than the previous generation GDDR6 standard, with SK hynix's new GDDR7 being over 50% more power efficient. This was achieved by using a new packaging technology that assists with the thermal issues that are generated by the huge speeds flowing through the GDDR7 memory chips.

SK hynix increased the number of layers of the heat-dissipating substrates from 4 to 6 with its new GDDR7, while also applying EMC for the packaging material to help reduce thermal resistance by up to 74% compared to the previous generation, all while maintaining the same size of the product.

Sangkwon Lee, Head of DRAM Product Planning & Enablement at SK hynix, said that GDDR7 is expected to be adopted by a wider range of applications, as high-end 3D graphics, AI, high-performance computing (HPC) and autonomous driving.

Lee said: "We will continue to work towards enhancing our position as the most trusted AI memory solution provider by strengthening the premium memory lineup further".