Samsung GDDR6 memory with 16Gbps speeds comming soon
Samsung has stated officially that they will be producing the fastest and lowest power DRAM for next generation products. It has transfer rates of 16Gbps with a 64GB/s bandwidth while only using 1.35V of power. To put that into perspective, it is able to transfer 12 full, HD DVDs per second. Compared with GDDR5 DRAM, which has 8Gbps and 1.5V power consumption, it is a dramatic improvement in both speed and power usage. GDDR6 will come in 8Gb and 16Gb densities followed by 32Gb densities as production ramps up.
When it comes to potential customers of GDDR6 memory, Nviddia tops the list. Nvidia has already confirmed that the Volta GPU will be using GDDR6 memory next year. AMD didn't make any announcments about using the GDDR6 DRAM and may continue to use HBM2 DRAM on their Vega cards. This may be due to their partnership with Hynix but that may soon change as Hynix may offer GDDR6 memory in the future. Another potential customer may be Intel, who recently hired AMD's ex-graphics technology head, Raja Koduri. They may plan on developing their own discrete GPUs. The future is looking brighter for high end graphics cards in the years to come.