On February 20th, 2024, Samsung is set to show off two versions of its latest GDDR7 graphics memory technology to other industry players at ISSCC 2024. The ISSCC, or International Solid-State Circuits Conference, is a global forum for manufacturers and other industry players to show off their latest SoCs and advances in solid-state circuits— including, yes, new iterations of DRAM and VRAM.
Samsung showing off GDDR7 at ISSCC this year isn't a huge surprise. After all, last year we heard announcements from both Micron and Samsung that they were planning to release GDDR7 soon, with Micron even specifying a 1H 2024 release window.
GDDR7 VRAM is expected to come with great improvements to not only bandwidth, but also power consumption (at the same performance level of GDDR6/X) thanks to the adoption of PAM3 signaling over traditional signaling methods. Of course, making the most of GDDR7 could still see it using comparable power to modern GDDR6 configurations, just with a higher degree of performance-per-watt. The next revision of USB4 is also expected to adopt PAM3 signaling for reduced power consumption, as well.
Two versions of GDDR7 VRAM are expected to be seen at ISSCC this year: a low-power 35.4 Gb/s per-pin GDDR7 from SK hynix, and a higher-power 37 Gb/s per-pin GDDR7 from Samsung. For your reference, GDDR6X's bandwidth per pin is roughly 19-24 Gigabits, according to Micron.
The low-power version is most likely being targeted at laptops, and its presentation, which is officially titled "A 35.4Gb/s/pin 16Gb GDDR7 with a Low-Power Clocking Architecture and PAM3 IO Circuitry" leans toward this interpretation.
Meanwhile, the high-power GDDR7 presentation is titled "A 16Gb 37Gb/s GDDR7 DRAM with PAM3-Optimized TRX Equalization and ZQ Calibration." This most likely corresponds to the version of GDDR7 we can expect to see in desktop GPUs — perhaps even later this year, if Micron's past comments on its introducing GDDR7 in 1H 2024 still hold water.
Only time will tell how long it actually takes for us to see GDDR7 in shipping products, embedded into a graphics card or laptop for us end users to enjoy. Considering past comments and the timing of Samsung's upcoming presentation at ISSCC, though, GDDR7-equipped GPUs will likely find their way to us before the end of the year.
