Hynix intros GDDR4 DRAM

By Steve Malone

Posted on 6 Dec 2005 at 10:51

Korean memory manufacturer Hynix Semiconductor has announced the availability of the world's first 512 Megabit GDDR4 DRAM. The company claims that new chips provide the world's fastest and highest density graphics memory.

The foundation of the blazingly fast graphics from the major suppliers such as ATi and NVidia GDDR is an ultra-high speed graphics DRAM that processes movie quality animations and graphics data for personal computers and game consoles. The Hynix 16Mx32 512Mb GDDR4 runs at up to 2.9Gbps, which equates to a stunning 11.6 Gigabytes per second. The company says that this fourth-generation graphics memory GDDR4, is almost twice the speed of GDDR3.

The company says that this level of graphics speeds makes it ideal for 64-bit systems, aiming it squarely at the workstation market and top of the line games systems. However, it is unlikely to be cheap - at least in the early production runs.

Hynix says that it will begin to sample the GDDR4 parts to leading graphic chipset suppliers and plans to start mass production in early 2006.

According to its roadmap, Hynix hopes to introduce its GDDR4 DRAM with speeds of up to 14.4GB in the second half of 2006.