Samsung is mass producing DRAM based on second-gen High Bandwidth Memory interface

Shawn Knight

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Samsung on Tuesday announced that it has begun mass production of 4GB DRAM packages based on the second generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM2) interface using its 20-nanometer manufacturing process.

The South Korean technology giant says its 4GB HBM2 package is created by stacking four 8-gigabit (Gb) core dies on top of a buffer die which are vertically interconnected using the through silicon via (TSV) interconnect technique.

As you'd expect, the new DRAM package is no slouch in the performance department. Samsung says the package offers 256GBps of bandwidth - double what's possible with HBM1 and a more than seven-fold increase over the 36GBps bandwidth of a 4Gb GDDR5 DRAM chip. It also enables enhanced power efficiency by doubling the bandwidth per watt over a 4Gb GDDR5-based solution and has error-correcting code (ECC) support built in, making it ideal for enterprise use.

Samsung said it also plans to produce an 8GB HBM2 DRAM package by the end of the year, allowing graphics card makers to save as much as 95 percent of space versus using GDDR5 DRAM. More performance and greater efficiency is always a good thing.

It'll still be a while before these chips find their way to graphics cards you can buy but that's alright. Starting production early means supply constraints are less likely, something that first generation HBM has suffered from.

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It'll still be a while before these chips find their way to graphics cards you can buy
Says who? Reference, please!

From what we know Pascal is based on this memory, and that's just just a month or so away from official announcement.
 
So the alleged hbm2 shortage is an artificial one created by the industry to keep hbm2-powered gpu at a high price than normal?
 
It'll still be a while before these chips find their way to graphics cards you can buy
Says who? Reference, please!

From what we know Pascal is based on this memory, and that's just just a month or so away from official announcement.

official announcement, that first Pascal GPU will be available Q4 ... for the holiday season.
 
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