JEDEC Solid State Technology Association today announced the initial publication of the widely-anticipated Synchronous DDR4 (Double Data Rate 4) standard.

JEDEC DDR4 (JESD79-4) has been defined to provide higher performance, with improved reliability and reduced power. The new DDR4 standard is available for free download from the JEDEC website at http://www.jedec.org/standards-documents/results/jesd79-4%20ddr4. The spec defines an interface delivering up to 3.2 GigaTransfers/second and is Jedec?s first to include features supporting 3-D stacking.

DDR4 offers a range of features designed to enable high speed operation and applicability in a variety of applications including servers, laptops, desktop PCs and consumer products.

The per-pin data rate for DDR4 is specified as 1.6 giga transfers per second to an initial maximum objective of 3.2 giga transfers per second. With DDR3 exceeding its original targeted performance of 1.6 GT/s, it is likely that higher performance speed grades will be added in a future DDR4 update. Other DDR4 attributes intertwined with the planned speed grades, enabling device functionality as well as application adoption, include: a pseudo open drain interface on the DQ bus, a geardown mode for 2,667 MT/s per DQ and beyond, bank group architecture, internally generated VrefDQ and improved training modes.

The DDR4 architecture is an 8n prefetch with two or four selectable bank groups. This design will permit the DDR4 memory devices to have separate activation, read, write or refresh operations underway in each unique bank group. This concept will also improve overall memory efficiency and bandwidth, especially when small memory granularities are used. More information about additional features may be found on the JEDEC website.

In addition, DDR4 has been designed in such a way that stacked memory devices may prove to be a key factor during the lifetime of the technology, with stacks of up to 8 memory devices presenting only a single signal load.