DDR5: Redefining What’s Possible in Tech

According to pioneering inventor and futurist, Ray Kurzweil, “Our intuition about the future is linear. But the reality of information technology is exponential.” Across a multitude of market segments, including smart cities, automotive, genomics research and supercomputers, the demands on core computing components are growing. From processors to memory to data storage, speeds and capacities must increase to match the exponential pace of technological advancement. And while SDRAM has also continued to advance, developments with double data rate (DDR) memory have been relatively modest over the past couple decades. Memory bandwidth is failing to keep up with increasing CPU core counts. This trend is about to change with the release of DDR5. 100% Performance Increase DDR5 represents a major leap forward for SDRAM. Samsung’s DDR5 module boasts transfer speeds of up to 7,200 Mbps, enabling it to more effectively handle the ever-increasing demands of larger and more complex data workloads like those of hyperscale data centers. With the growth of artificial intelligence and machine learning increasing demands on datacenter infrastructure, DDR5 provides higher memory bandwidth, data rates and densities for reliable scalability. DDR5 offers up to a 100% increase in performance over DDR4. This incredible boost in performance will dramatically improve big data processing, which will in turn have a dramatic impact on the wide range of sectors that have begun to transition to high performance computing (HPC). In finance, for example, HPC is employed to tackle the enormous number of calculations needed for everything from risk management to compliance. In the medical field, exascale supercomputers that leverage the increased performance of DDR5 will be used to identify new and more effective cancer treatments. Exascale systems will, for example, be used to leverage machine learning models to predict which patients will respond to specific drugs. This novel approach to customizing cancer treatments at scale requires computational power that previously was unavailable.

2X Capacity Chip capacity is another way in which Samsung’s DDR5 will enable technological advances. Samsung’s 10nm-class process and EUV technology permit DDR5 chip units to ultimately double from 16Gb to 32Gb. Doubling chip capacity means that a single module can contain beyond 512GB. These 512GB modules can fluidly handle huge simultaneous workloads. This will allow for improved scalability in datacenters and reduced footprint across all applications. 30% More Energy Efficient Finally, DDR5 achieves 30% better power efficiency than DDR4. Many of the attributes that make DDR5 faster also lead to an increase in energy efficiency. For instance, DDR5 increases burst length to about double that of DDR4, improving both command/address and data bus efficiency. In addition, DDR5 doubles the number of bank groups, thus improving overall system efficiency by allowing more pages to be open at any given time. DDR5’s on-DIMM PMIC further boosts power management efficiency. Taken together, these factors make DDR5 not just faster but also more energy efficient and cost effective. For example, replacing a data center’s DDR4 with DDR5 will save up to 1TWh of electricity annually. DDR5 represents a major opportunity for businesses and organizations in diverse sectors looking to increase computational power, improve scalability, and reduce both costs and power consumption. While DDR5 might not improve our intuition, it will unlock the power of the next generation of processors and allow us to handle the demands of information technology as it continues on the path of exponential growth predicted by Kurzweil. Learn more about DDR5 here.