Micron, it appears, is very excited about having a new graphics technology that’s actually an evolution to GDDR5 ready, and more quickly than they originally planned. GDDR6 is getting closer to release and it seems that Micron is fast tracking that development to help provide another alternative to HBM2 for next generation consumer GPUs.
GDDR6 will be a great step above GDDR5X
And it will even be considered competitive with HBM1 in terms of raw bandwidth. We’re expecting a transfer rate of 16Gbps, which is twice the transfer rate of GDDR5 though nearly on par with the theoretical maximum of GDDR5X. Other changes are expected to reduce latency and increase the amount of data that can be sent per pass and even error recovery rates. Raw bus widths will probably be similar to what we’re used to for GDDR5X and vanilla GDDR5. Once GDDR6 is released, GDDR5X will be the low-end solution.
The rate of PC adoption for gaming is exceeding expectations and even the the upgrade cycle is fairly more quickly than it used to be. The average seems to have increased to around three years for a new PC. That much activity in the PC space helps to motivate part manufacturers like Micron to further improve their technologies at a greater pace, if it’s feasible.