Micron is well-prepared to match whatever NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel have planned for the coming year, as they are set to release their next-generation graphics memory. Although the GDDR7 standard has been frequently discussed by memory manufacturers over the past two years, it has not yet progressed to the sampling phase.
During Micron’s fiscal Q3 2023 earnings call, the CEO confirmed that the company has plans to launch a new G7 product on its 1ß node in the upcoming year. However, at this time, the company is unable to disclose additional information, such as the potential speeds that the new memory could provide.
In graphics, industry analysts continue to expect graphics’ TAM compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to outpace the broader market, supported by applications across client and data center. We expect customer inventories to normalize in calendar Q3. We plan to introduce our next-generation G7 product on our industry-leading 1ß node in the first half of calendar year 2024.
— Sanjay Mehrotra, President and Chief Executive Officer
Presently, GDDR6 memory is being shipped with speeds reaching up to 20 Gbps for products like the Radeon RX 7900 series. However, Micron’s GDDR6X technology designed for NVIDIA RTX 40 series offers even higher speeds, reaching up to 22.4 Gbps for the RTX 4080.
Meanwhile, Samsung and other companies have announced their intentions to introduce GDDR7 memory with speeds of 36 Gbps in the future. Unfortunately, unlike Micron, Samsung has not confirmed the timeline for the availability of GDDR7 memory.
If a graphics card were to feature a 384-bit memory bus, it could potentially provide a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 1.7 TB/s, which is 70% higher than that of the RTX 4090. However, it is important for gamers to keep their expectations in check regarding such speeds with the first generation of G7 products. In fact, future GPUs may employ narrower memory buses while still delivering higher bandwidth.
Via Micron