South Korean Hynix Semiconductor announced the availability of a 512 Megabit GDDR4 DRAM, the DRAM industry's fastest and highest density graphics memory.
The graphics double data rate 4 (GDDR4) chips are high bandwidth DRAM (dynamic RAM) memory able to process heavy volumes of gaming and video images far faster than normal PC memory chips. They're a step up from the GDDR3 generation of chips currently used on the highest performing graphics cards today. Hynix said its GDDR4 chips are also ideal for 64-bit computing.
Hynix said that its fourth-generation graphics memory GDDR4 improves data processing speed by close to two times than that of GDDR3.
The Hynix's 16Mx32 512Mb GDDR4 operates at 2.9Gbps and processes 11.6 Gigabytes of data in 1 second.
Hynix said it would shortly begin to sample its GDDR4 products to leading graphic chipset suppliers and plans to start mass production in early 2006.
The company also plans to introduce its GDDR4 DRAM with 14.4GB speed by second half of 2006.
The fastest graphics memory chips had been limited to a speed of just 1.6Gbps prior to the launch of GDDR4.
The density and speed of Hynix's GDDR4 improves over a similar chip released by rival
Samsung in late October.
At the time Samsung was able to claim first place in the race to ship GDDR4 to customers for testing. Samsung's GDDR4 is a 256M bit chip that runs at 2.5Gbps, both smaller in density and slower in speed than Hynix's offering, based on the specifications each company has released.
Samsung plans to introduce a 2.8Gbps GDDR4 chip by the end of this year. The company said it expects the high performance graphics card market to grow significantly in the second half of next year.