SK hynix, a well-known manufacturer and developer of memory chips, today announced the launch of the world"s first DDR5 DRAM. About two years ago, the company had announced it was developing the first 16Gb DDR5 DRAM, and today the company delivered on that goal.
DDR5 is the next evolutionary step in memory technology, and it continues the trend of the past few generations, further lowering the operating voltage to 1.1V from 1.2V. This allows the unit to consume even less power, with SK hynix claiming a 20% reduction. Additionally, the new memory offers significantly faster transfers, with a transfer rate between 4,800Mbps and 5,600Mbps, 1.8 times higher than the range DDR4.
In addition to being much faster, the new DDR5 DRAM also includes error correcting code (ECC), which can correct 1-bit-level errors and increase application reliability by up to 20 times.
SK hynix also said that it will continue to work with other partners in the memory chip business to develop the DDR5 ecosystem. Some partners, like Montage Technology, already have DDR5 products listed on their websites, but SK hynix itself doesn"t appear to show any as of yet. At this time, DDR5 products are being geared towards high-performance computing tasks like Big Data, AI, and machine learning, so it may be some time before general consumers get to have it in their computers. Additionally, support for this memory is only planned for future generations of Intel and AMD processors.