Samsung Develops the First 30nm DDR4 DRAM

Tharic-Nar

Senior Editor
Staff member
Moderator
Samsung, the number 2 sales leader of semiconductors in the world from 2002 to 2009 (excluding foundries), has always been at the forefront of the DRAM market, and it's starting off 2011 in a big way. In a press release, it announced that it had completed development of its first DDR4 DRAM based Modules, utilizing 30nm process technology.

samsungddr4_010611.jpg

You can read the rest of our post and discuss here.
 

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
Think of it this way...DDR3 picked up where DDR2 left off at roughly 1066mhz. Now DDR4 is picking up where DDR3 left off at roughly 2133. Just wait until DDR4 modules get into the hands of OCZ, G.Skill, Corsair and the likes. I'd say we're looking at 3000mhz+ frequencies.

This is off topic but I'm curious to know whether or not these "designed for Sandy Bridge" kits I'm seeing are just marketing fluff or if there's truly something to it?
 
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Tharic-Nar

Senior Editor
Staff member
Moderator
Fluff.... but it's nice to know the stuff works... motherboard permitting...

As for 3GHz+ frequencies... nothing new... Rambus can do 8GHz with its XDR2 RAM, but no one uses it... why? because the IP owners are Patent Trolls... The PS3 probably costs a fortune because of that patent on the XDR memory...
 

Optix

Basket Chassis
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I'm surprised RAMBUS is still in business considering all the lawyers fees. I could make toast and they'd claim I infringed on one of their patents.

With the increased memory performance of the P67 chipset I wonder if there will really be any noticeable, real world difference between the fastest DDR3 and DDR4? Clearly there was between DDR2 and DDR3 but won't there be diminishing returns at some point?
 

Kougar

Techgage Staff
Staff member
I'm surprised RAMBUS is still in business considering all the lawyers fees. I could make toast and they'd claim I infringed on one of their patents.

Its because they won a fair number of their plethora of suits, and many companies didn't want to even mess with them and simply signed & paid for licensing agreements. It's unfortunate, but the US patent system is just going to make this more of the status quo.

With the increased memory performance of the P67 chipset I wonder if there will really be any noticeable, real world difference between the fastest DDR3 and DDR4? Clearly there was between DDR2 and DDR3 but won't there be diminishing returns at some point?

Technically the memory performance has nothing to do with the chipset anymore! But performance differences shouldn't be huge... given processors are only getting fatter pipes at the front-end for receiving ever larger data dumps, we very well may see another small performance jump like we saw with DDR2-800 to DDR3-1333.

Given there are over 22 SKUs on Newegg for DDR3 RAM rated from 2133MHz to 2500MHz, the speeds don't interest me as much as that sizable voltage drop. That should drop power consumption in laptops by low double-digit percentages, and reduce the heat generation in them too.
 

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
When I mentioned the increased performance with the P67 chipset I was mostly thinking along the lines of any performance gain from the memory controller being moved onto the CPU die resulting in reduced latency. That's assuming there is any real world gain.

Couple that with responsiveness due to memory frequency only being able to become so fast that you negate the need for faster memory unless you hardwire your brain so your PC knows you want to access data before you do. Hehehe.

I'm kind of confusing myself because I'm doing this in between dealing with people who have no business messing around with their servers.
 

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
I still can't believe DDR4 isn't available yet. I remember talking to OCZ about it in like 2006, and I think I expected to see it by now at least. Of course, is it even needed? That's the big question. People are still surviving on DDR2 just fine.

Kougar said:
Given there are over 22 SKUs on Newegg for DDR3 RAM rated from 2133MHz to 2500MHz, the speeds don't interest me as much as that sizable voltage drop. That should drop power consumption in laptops by low double-digit percentages, and reduce the heat generation in them too.

I agree with this 100%.
 
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