Samsung GDDR7 Heads for 32Gbps

DRAM IS AT THE HEART of many computing devices. Whether it's DDR4 and DDR5 in PCs, HBM2 and HBM3 in GPUs, or GDDR6 and GDDR6X in graphics cards, a lot of the building blocks remain the same. It's the signaling that get upgraded, and now GDDR7 is on its way, with Samsung modules in production and Micron's alternatives to arrive in 2024.

- Jarred Walton

It’s a safe bet that GDDR7 will end up in the next-generation AMD, Nvidia, and Intel GPUs. We don’t expect any of those to start shipping until 2024 at earliest—Intel’s Battlemage architecture will almost certainly be the first “next-gen” GPU to arrive—so we still have plenty of time. But the transition is otherwise right on schedule.

The first GDDR6 graphics cards launched in 2018 with Nvidia’s RTX 20-series, with GDDR6 at 12–15.5 Gbps (GTX 1650 to RTX 2080 Super). AMD RDNA GPUs also used GDDR6, again ranging from 12–14 Gbps. Two generations later, the latest Nvidia Ada and AMD RDNA 3 GPUs have pushed GDDR6 speeds of 17–20 Gbps, with GDDR6X clocked as high as 22.4 Gbps for the Nvidia RTX 4080.