Samsung begins mass production of 1GB GDDR5 chips #SDC

Samsung has started to mass-produce the industry’s first 8 gigabit (Gb) GDDR5* DRAM based on the company’s leading-edge 20-nanometer (nm) process technology.

“We expect that our 8Gb GDDR5 will provide original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) with the best graphics memory solution available for game consoles as well as general use notebook PCs,” said Joo Sun Choi, Executive Vice president of Memory Sales and Marketing at Samsung Electronics.

Samsung’s new GDDR5 DRAM offers outstanding bandwidth. Combining only eight of the new 8Gb chips will achieve the same density as the 8 gigabytes (GB) needed in the latest game consoles.

The memory operates with an I/O data rate of 8 gigabits per second (Gbps) per pin, which is more than four times faster than the DDR3 DRAM widely used in notebook PCs today, and each chip can process data at 32-bit I/O rate.

http://global.samsungtomorrow.com/samsung-electronics-starts-mass-producing-industrys-first-8-gigabit-graphics-dram-gddr5/

Shamelessly stolen from gaf.

8 Gigabit (Gb) = 1 Gigabyte (GB)

PS4 uses 16 512MB GDDR5 chips from Samsung. Now they'll be able to use 8 1GB chips. This will bring down the cost of PS4s quite a bit.

$299 PS4 slim with Uncharted 4 bundled would be godlike. Domination is secured for this gen.

Nintendo should consider this for their next console. 12 GB of GDDR5 RAM would be plenty for the system. Nintendo themselves would probably only use a fraction of it but 3rd party devs wouldn't be able to complain about it.

Stands for both in this case. Both benefit greatly from this.

Is this really news it's called progression of technology. GDDR6 is on the way or maybe XDR2 will be a successor or for the truely futuristic holographic memory is indeed being worked on with petabyte bandwidth.

If you think this will benefit the PS4 then you are sadly mistaken.

Not going to happen. You can increase the storage but you can't increase the memory without having devs redesign their games.

Samsung pretends to produce high quality premium stuff but in reality it's subpar cheap crap. Going through screens in a single LEDTV in the course of 2 years, each with different faults is a testament to that. And now 4 months after the last replacement, it's got another fault too.

PS4 slim? This new chip could be used for that, right?

If its the same specs as the original build then sure. You won't see a PS4 with 16GB of GDDR5 though.

How come? The 360 got at least 4 fairly major redesigns, if it's cheaper to make revisions to the board and use the 1 gigabit memory then they will.

Of course they're not going to be adding extra RAM but could cut costs for Sony and make a price cut more likely for the consumer.

That is what I meant. I know that you can redesign the boards and chips.

@clyde46:

This in theory would allow them to use less chips in the manufacturing process (and probably make a more energy/heat efficient console), so it should be useful for a Slim PS4 for example.

However I'm not sure changing the number of memory chips and respective memory size wouldn't cause issues with previous games that use the hardware in a specific way. Could be a non-issue, could be an issue. Even if it was an issue perhaps it could be solved with some firware (versus individual updates for each and every game)? Not entirely sure how that works.

Oh right, i didn't know what you meant by the no benefit for the PS4 bit.

From what I understand is, consoles are made to a set spec. Every console that comes off the production line is exactly the same and they can ALL play the same games at the same level of graphics etc. When you start throwing in different hardware configs, you have to start including options for users to tweak and change much like PC gamers have to and we all know that console users aren't intelligent (thats why they play on consoles) so they will struggle.

Plus, it can add to the development time and cost and we all know how little effort some devs put into AAA games these days.

@Desmonic: Stole this quote from Gaf: "TSMC's 20nm process technology can provide 30 percent higher speed, 1.9 times the density, or 25 percent less power than its 28nm technology."

Don't know how reliable that is (have they been using 28nm?) but it seems there'll be a drop in power draw and probably heat as you said.

Why the hell would they use that?

The ATX mobo standard is DDR4 which has already been decided on and the industry is moving that. This seems like a horrible decision for them. It also has nothing to do with Sony.

I am an idiot. Don't listen to me.

Wat? The PS4 doesn't use DDR4 system memory.

Oh god dammit I should read the whole thing.

Never mind.

This is in fact good news for Sony. They should be able to lower the price quicker.

@clyde46: I think you missed my point :P

I'm well aware they won't increase the amount of RAM (nor will they suddendly give it a better CPU or GPU).

What they could possibly do, with this, is cut the number of chips in half. The current PS4 has 16 512Mb chips (for a total of 8GB), so it could be entirely possible that some games make use of that specific setup. By cutting that number in half and also increasing the memory in each chip, I don't know how (or if) it would affect the way games use the RAM (especially older ones). I assume that most devs make use of the RAM in it's totallity (of what's available to them), so perhaps a "simple" firmware could fix whatever issues this would cause, if any.

However it's still possible some games (like 1st party games, which make much greater use of the setup itself) could be affected. So if someone could clear that one for, I'd appreciate it. :P

No.

@clyde46: No?

Doesn't work like that. You can't be doing hardware changes mid way through a cycle and not cause problems for devs. Just look at those graphics add-ons for the old Sega and Nintendo consoles. Only a fraction of people bought them because hardly any games made use of them.

Quantity is irrelevant these days. Clock speed is far more important. Finding the best balance between the two before diminishing returns kicks in is probably going to be the best thing for Nintendo to choose.

@clyde46: These aren't really graphical add-ons though. Kind of a strange case. Ah well, in a year or two (more or less when they go Slim) we'll know if Sony goes with this or not :P

Same principle. You now have a split user base that you have to cater for.

@clyde46: They could always call it PS4.5 and sell it to the same people :P

Next revision. They would have to do this for a slim version anyway.

You then have to produce two versions of a game....

@clyde46: Na brah, drop the support for the OG PS4. Problem solved! xD

I don't know about consoles but I remember PSP ram was increased later in its life time I think it was from 32 MB to 64MB and that didn't affect the performance of the games on the old version it just allowed the newer version to have a more stable UI and extra features.

Thought the whole point of consoles was having a equal ground? If some systems are stronger than others. Then you are just separating the community and ultimately losing the last thing consoles have going for them in accordance to competitive multiplayer.

I know cows(not calling you a cow) like to think Sony does everything for the consumer but lowering the price? I don't see why Sony would lower it when it's one of the fastest selling consoles of all time. Wouldn't they want to continue making as much profit as they can considering all the other divisions losing millions upon millions for them?

I meant that the consumer would be benefiting through a price cut not that Sony would cut the price for the consumer :)

I should have split the benefits up like so:

Sony - Gain better margins

Consumer - Might see a price cut earlier than before as Sony won't be worrying about their margins as much, will also get a console that uses less power and creates less heat possibly improving lifespan.

It's all a balancing act with the price, they'll be weighing up the profits made off the extra sales a price drop would bring with the better margins leaving the price has. If they think sales will go up enough i'm sure they'd take the extra consoles being out there with PS+ subscriptions, peripherals and games being sold.

But yeh, i don't see a price cut for some time, they simply don't need it even if the Xbox makes ground in the US but this does give them more flexibility. Especially if they start dropping a game like Gran Turismo that tends to send Europe nuts and if MGS5 revives some Japanese sales, plus there's some pretty solid titles like UC4 and Bloodborne already plus Street Fighter 5 might help. The PS4's been selling like crazy despite a lackluster lineup so i can see them getting some nuts sales with those games.

You will not see a price cut from Sony for a good year or even two because its simply selling so well at its current price point.

They would have to use a decent CPU/GPU for there to be any point to that amount of RAM, something I doubt Nintendo would do. Although by the time Nintendo's next console is ready (probably 2018'ish) - 12GB might be a baseline by then. Who knows.

I'd rather they just discovered the concept of internal storage, account log-ins that work from any device, and make sure the power cord is actually included.

OMG I want PS4 slim with Uncharted.

Da **** you guys talking about anyway?

The 360's Cpu and Gpu were made into a SoC for god's sake and nothing happened. So reducing memory modules from 16 to 8 will do shit.

But Sony literally destroyed X1,Wii U consoles on ww sales with almost zero super offers and zero price cuts etc let alone any big software gun ... Imagine a price cut of 99$ anytime soon.. oh boy.

So New Wii U will have 4gigs of ddr3 then

Not really relevant news unless you're upgrading this on your PC.

Most games today don't even touch 6 GB or RAM. Having 12 GB of GDDR5 should be enough to cover their needs even with the ram set aside for OS operation. Nintendo should be able to make a quick enough OS to work with 2 GB of that ram. 10 GB of RAM should be plenty for next generation.

Old...

The PS4's memory isn't the problem, it's slow ass APU is. Sony could double the amount of GDDR5 in that thing and it wouldn't magically make games run better.

No, I think he meant that Sony could achieve the same amount of ram by using half the amount of memory modules. Making things overall cheaper to manufacture.

Won't happen as Takeda and Nintendo's first party devs like their low latency D-RAM and eDRAM combo's.

Amazing how people say this every gen, you're thinking of *current* RAM usage, people thought Ps4 would have just 2 gigs lol. Nintendo will bare minimum have 16gb's, they should use 32gb's if they at least want to compete in the 9th gen.

Ps5 and nextbox will likely have 64gb's.

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/amd-developers-confirm-radeon-r9-380x-with-hbm-memory/

Two employees of Advanced Micro Devices have revealed in their LinkedIn profiles that they had worked on AMD Radeon R9 380X graphics processing units with vertically-stacked high bandwidth memory (HBM). The engineers at AMD essentially confirmed that the company’s next-generation flagship graphics processor will use HBM memory and will carry the “R9 380X” model number.

Linglan Zhang, a principal member of technical staff at AMD, wrote in his profile at LinkedIn that he was involved in development of the “world’s first 300W 2.5D discrete GPU SOC using stacked die high bandwidth memory and silicon interposer.” The engineer also revealed that the Radeon R9 380X is the “largest in ‘King of the hill’ line of products.” Previously it was believed that this year’s flagship GPU from AMD carries the “R9 390X” model number. The employee of AMD has already deleted the information regarding the next-generation AMD Radeon.

Ilana Shternshain, ASIC physical design engineer from AMD, also revealed in her profile that she was responsible for “taping out state of the art products like Intel Pentium processor with MMX technology and AMD R9 290X and 380X GPUs.”