Micron Kicks GDDR6 Production Into High Gear

Micron announced today that it had commenced mass production of its 8Gb GDDR6 memory chips. The networking, automotive, and graphics card industries are on the path to adopt the new GDDR6 memory standard in their next-generation products, and Micron is keen to provide the necessary ingredients to fuel the transition.

Although there is an increasing demand for GDDR6 in general, the graphics card industry is where the gold really lies. Micron has been working hand-in-hand with its ecosystem partners to help accelerate the delivery of GDDR6 products to its customers.

Designed entirely at the company’s Munich-based development center, Micron’s GDDR6 memory solutions promise a substantial performance improvement over even the fastest current GDDR5 offerings. Initially, Micron aims to release its 8Gb GDDR6 memory chips in 12 Gbps and 14 Gbps flavors for the graphics card sector with plans to introduce faster 16Gbps GDDR6 memory chips in the not-so-distant future. With low power consumption being one of GDDR6’s most noteworthy attributes, Micron’s upcoming 8Gb 12 Gbps and 14 Gbps GDDR6 memory chips both operate at 1.35V as opposed to GDDR5’s 1.5V.

In terms of density, there is still a lot of headroom for improvement though, as the GDDR6 specification states a maximum capacity of 32Gb. As a matter of fact, Micron has set aside the part numbers for its 16Gb memory chips, so it’s safe to say that they are already in the development phase. Besides exploiting GDDR6’s capacity, Micron has been experimenting with the data rate, and it’s showing great potential. The memory expert recently presented a research paper evidencing how it was able to successfully overclock one of its GDDR6 prototype memory chips to a staggering 20 Gbps with a just slight bump in I/O voltage.

However, Micron doesn't just focus its vast GDDR6 portfolio on graphics card manufacturers. The company also offers its specially-tailored 8Gb GDDR6 memory chips at 10 Gbps and 12 Gbps speeds to its networking and automotive customers. These GDDR6 chips sacrifice speed in favor of a lower operating voltage of 1.25V.