JEDEC on Tuesday published the official specifications for GDDR7 DRAM, the latest iteration of the long-standing memory standard for graphics cards and other GPU-powered devices. The newest generation of GDDR brings a combination of memory capacity and memory bandwidth gains, with the later being driven primarily by the switch to PAM3 signaling on the memory bus. The latest graphics RAM standard also boosts the number of channels per DRAM chip, adds new interface training patterns, and brings in on-die ECC to maintain the effective reliability of the memory.
“JESD239 GDDR7 marks a substantial advancement in high-speed memory design,” said Mian Quddus, JEDEC Board of Directors Chairman. “With the shift to PAM3 signaling, the memory industry has a new path to extend the performance of GDDR devices and drive the ongoing evolution of graphics and various high-performance applications.”
GDDR7 has been in development for a few years now, with JEDEC members making the first disclosures around the memory technology about a year ago, when Cadence revealed the use of PAM3 encoding as part of their validation tools. Since then we've heard from multiple memory manufacturers that we should expect the final version of the memory to launch in 2024, with JEDEC's announcement essentially coming right on schedule.
