After much waiting, the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association has finally released the specification for DDR5 SDRAM, the successor to DDR4; it will serve as a blueprint for future CPU platform designs and will aim to push memory density and frequency to new heights.
Here you will find complete information about the newly released DDR5 SDRAM.
What is DDR5 SDRAM?
DDR5 SDRAM is an abbreviation for “Double Data Rate 5 Synchronous Dynamic Random-Access Memory” and is the newest memory standard, which will start to replace DDR4 RAM.
The JEDEC Solid State Technology Association published the JESD79-5 DDR5 SDRAM standard in July 2020. DDR5 was supposed to be released in 2018, but there have been multiple delays.
Like previous DDR generations, adoption is expected to be slow.
Initially, servers are expected to drive early adoption of DDR5, but mainstream adoption is expected to start in late 2021. Demand for DDR5 is expected to grow rapidly over the next two years.
According to International Data Corporation (IDC), it is estimated that DDR5 will account for 22% of the DRAM market in 2021 and then increase to 43% of total DRAM sales in 2022.
DDR5 release date
SK Hynix has released some data in early 2020 about the DDR5 memory that they plan to mass-produce by the end of the year and through 2021. The data was impressive, to say the least.
What can you expect from DDR5 RAM?
The three main benefits of DDR5 are higher performance, bandwidth, and lower power consumption.
This is what we know:
- memory frequency
- memory density
- lower power consumption
- burst length
- Bank Structure
- ECC bug fixes
DDR5 will increase performance and bandwidth right from the start. When DDR4 was initially released, it started at 1600 MHz and officially grew to 3200 MHz. However, some memory manufacturers offer DDR4 memory with overclocking up to 5000 MHz, albeit at a prohibitive price.
At launch, the frequency of DDR5 memory will range from 3200 MHz to 8400 MHz.
It has been reported that memory manufacturers expect all DDR5 to run at 4800 MHz or faster.
Those are huge increases compared to DDR4 and that’s why everyone is excited. Once released, DDR5 will have at least 50% more bandwidth (4800 MHz vs 3200 MHz) than DDR4.
DDR5 will be able to support a memory capacity of up to 64 GB, compared to 16 GB for DDR4. A single DIMM can support 64 GB DDR5 memory, so when using double capacity, the maximum capacity is 128 GB.
The different densities for a single DDR4 chip are 2 GB, 4 GB, 8 GB, or 16 GB. With DDR5, there will be five different single-chip densities: 8GB, 16GB, 24GB, 32GB, or 64GB.
SK Hynix is expected to mass-produce DDR5 memory with 8400 MHz and 64 GB density this year.
DDR5 will have lower power consumption. Overall power consumption has been reduced by 20% and that will also help limit heat generation at higher frequencies.
VDD/VDDQ will drop to 1.1V with DDR5, down to 1.2V with DDR4. The VPP has seen a significant drop from 2.5V (DDR4) to 1.8V (DDR5). The lower power consumption is ideal for mobile devices.
Smartphones and tablets rely on energy-saving RAM to extend battery life.
When DDR4 was released, the burst length (BL) stayed the same as with DDR3 (8 bits), but with DDR5, the burst length was increased to 16 bits, which will be a welcome improvement.
There will be a new structure of 32 banks (8 groups of banks), which will improve performance. With DDR4, there was a 16 bank structure (4 bank groups), so the number of banks has now doubled.
Another new feature is “Same Bank Update”, which essentially means that each memory bank will be able to be updated independently. With DDR4 this was not possible and the banks needed to be updated simultaneously. This new feature allows for performance improvements when dealing with larger memory capacities, which was starting to become an issue with DDR4.
DDR4 memory needs an additional chip to perform ECC error correction, but that is no longer the case with DDR5 as the feature has now been implemented in every DRAM.
As you can see, there have been a lot of performance improvements for DDR5.
DDR5 Vs DDR4- What is the difference?
| ddr5 | DDR4 | |
| device densities | 8GB – 64GB | 2Gb – 16Gb |
| UDIMM maximum size | 128GB | 32GB |
| Data transfer rates | 3200 – 6400 MTps | 1,600 – 3,200 MTps |
| burst length | BL16, BL32 (and BC8 OTF, BL32 OTF) | BL8 (and BL4) |
| Bank Groups (BG) / Banks | 8 BG x 2 Banks (8Gb x4/x8), 4 BG x 2 Banks (8Gb x16), 8 BG x 4 Banks (16-64Gb x4/x8), 4 BG x 4 Banks (16-64Gb x16) | 4 BG x 4 banks (x4/x8), 2 BG x 4 banks (x16) |
| UPDATE Commands | All banks and the same bank | the whole bank |
| VDD / VDDQ / VPP | 1.1 / 1.1 / 1.8 | 1.2 / 1.2 / 2.5 |
When can I buy DDR5?
DDR5 will initially be geared towards high-end systems with lots of CPU cores.
The starting price is likely to be high as well, as with previous generations of DDR SDRAM. With that said, we do have some clues as to when consumers will be able to use DDR5.
Some high-end DDR4 RAM still goes for over $200 and with the big improvements to DDR5 we may see the starting price well over $200, but like most tech products the price will start to drop pretty quickly once availability/demand starts to pick up among consumers.
Should you buy DDR5?
We recommend not rushing to buy DDR5, as DDR4 is comparable, and unless you work with artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics, or are a heavy PC gamer, the benefits may not be noticeable.
The price will also restrict the early adoption of DDR5 SDRAM. Another factor that will determine when consumers should buy DDR5 is software/hardware compatibility.
Intel is not expected to support DDR5 in servers until next year. While I expect to see some consumer DDR5 options on the market in 2021, prices won’t be reasonable until 2022 at the earliest, so consumers still have plenty of time to research the powerful new memory standard.
If you’re looking for upgraded RAM right now, DDR4 is still the best option.
Conclusion
To conclude, we now know the capabilities of DDR5. There will be big improvements, including doubling the bandwidth (memory frequency) and big improvements in memory density.
DDR5 will also use less power and includes many new features.
We also know that DDR5 will be rolled out to servers first, then to high-end gaming PCs, and finally to consumer PCs/laptops. It could still be a while before most consumers embrace DDR5.
Now that JEDEC has released the JESD79-5 DDR5 SDRAM standard, I expect more news from the big memory manufacturers and what their roadmap for DDR5 starts to leak out.
We’ll keep you posted on the latest DDR5 news and as soon as we can test DDR5, everyone will be the first to know. It’s definitely time to start getting excited about DDR5.
Categories: Technology
Source: SCHOOL TRANG DAI
