Cadence, Micron to Begin DDR5 RAM Production by 2019's End

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Micron DDR4 RAM modules

Despite the JEDEC specification for DDR5 not being finalized yet, Cadence and Micron have already started developing 16Gb DDR5 RAM, which they say will be ready to start production by the end of 2019.

DDR5 Is Coming

JEDEC, the group that develops the DDR standard for RAM, is expected to finalize the DDR5 standard later this year. However, it seems Cadence and Micron were impatient and wanted to get a head start with the almost finalized standard that’s available right now. Cadence developed the DDR5 interface IP, while Micron crafted the first silicon prototype for DDR5 RAM. The two companies tested a 4400MT/s DDR5 chip prototype for the first time earlier this May.

Micron’s Ryan Baxter said that production of 16Gb DDR5 memory will begin late 2019, manufactured at a sub-18 process, so we should start seeing systems with DDR5 RAM sometime in 2020. It’s not clear when Intel will support DDR5 memory for its chips, but AMD had previously announced that it will support its current AM4 socket until 2020. That could mean that we may see AMD chips with DDR5 as soon as 2020.

Increased Bandwidth Is the Focus

The primary goal of the DDR5 RAM seems to be to increase bandwidth, especially for systems in professional environments and data centers. Compared to DDR4-3200 RAM, the DDR5-3200 RAM will see an increase of 1.36x in bandwidth.

However, the DDR5 RAM chips are expected to start at 4800MT/s, which would be a 1.87x increase in bandwidth compared to DDR4-3200 RAM. The DDR5 standard has an official limit of 6400MT/s, but we may see some memory companies push that further.

Other benefits of DDR5 RAM include 32/40-bit channels per module, improved command bus efficiency, improved refresh schemes and an increased bank group for additional performance.

Lucian Armasu
Lucian Armasu
Lucian Armasu is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He covers software news and the issues surrounding privacy and security.
5 Comments Comment from the forums
  • BulkZerker
    Good let's wish Micron luck in yanking the carpet out from under Samsung when the new standard appears.
    Reply
  • Lucky_SLS
    Faster ryzen, yay!
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    21411688 said:
    Faster ryzen, yay!
    I'd hope that AMD will have mostly decoupled CPU performance from memory frequency by the time DDR5 becomes mainstream, preferably as soon as Ryzen 3 next year to improve its competitive situation against Intel's CPUs which are far less sensitive to memory clock. A $30 cheaper Ryzen CPU does you little good if you need to spend $40 more on faster RAM to match Intel's performance.
    Reply
  • Lucky_SLS
    As long as we see the infinity fabric as the expressway in zen uarch, that's not gonna change I believe...
    Reply
  • hannibal
    AMD use ddr4 at least untill 2020, so 2021 we may see Ryzen with ddr5 memory support. So it may be Ryzen4 by then.
    But yeah! New memory standard is good. Older memory will/may get cheaper for short period of time!
    Reply