Hynix announces world's first 40nm 2Gb GDDR5 chips

Memory semiconductor supplier Hynix today announced a new GDDR5 memory chip it claims to have the highest performance and density on the market yet. Using a 40nm manufacturing process, these chips can pack 2 gigabits (256MB) of data and are designed to support a maximum data transfer speed of 7.0Gbps and process up to 28 GB/s with a 32-bit I/O.


Although bandwidth and processing power are on par with the best chips on the market today, Hynix claims that these new chips are up to 20 percent more power efficient as they operate at 1.35V instead of the 1.5V of previous generation of 50nm GDDR5 memory. Furthermore the increased density will allow manufacturers to squeeze in twice as much memory per graphics card, or the same but using half the number of chips. The latter would save PCB space and component cost, which could eventually lead to more affordable products.

Hynix says it will begin mass producing its new 2Gb GDDR5 chips in the second half of next year to meet the increasing demand for high-performance graphics memory.