SK hynix ready to mass produce GDDR7 chips from Q3
The world's second-largest memory chip maker, SK hynix, has unveiled its next-generation graphics memory chip, and says it is ready to go to market in weeks.
The GDDR7 chip is based on GDDR, a type of high-performance memory commonly used in graphics cards and more recently in artificial intelligence workloads. SK hynix introduced the product at the GTC 2024 a developer conference hosted by US chip giant Nvidia in March.
Official information says the GDDR7 chip can be operated at 32 gigabits per second, a 60 percent improvement from the previous generation. It can reach up to 40 gigabits per second depending on the circumstances. When adopted for high-end graphics cards, it can process data of more than 1.5 terabytes in a second.
GDDR7 is also power efficient thanks to a new packaging technology that addresses heat issues caused by ultra-fast data processing. SK hynix has increased the layer number of the heat-dissipating substrates from four to six.
Lee Sang-kwon, head of the DRAM product planning division at SK hynix, said that GDDR7 is expected to be have a wider range of applications, such as high-specification 3D graphics, AI, high-performance computing and autonomous driving.
The other two members of the “big three” of the memory market — Micron and Samsung — have also shown off GDDR7 samples this year.
