Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today announced that it has completed development of the industry’s first Graphics Double Data Rate 7 (GDDR7) DRAM. It will first be installed in next-generation systems of key customers for verification this year, driving future growth of the graphics market and further consolidating Samsung’s technological leadership in the field.

Following Samsung’s development of the industry’s first 24Gbps GDDR6 DRAM in 2022, the company’s 16-gigabit (Gb) GDDR7 offering will deliver the industry’s highest speed yet. Innovations in integrated circuit (IC) design and packaging provide added stability despite high-speed operations.

“Our GDDR7 DRAM will help elevate user experiences in areas that require outstanding graphics performance, such as workstations, PCs and game consoles, and is expected to expand into future applications such as AI, high-performance computing (HPC) and automotive vehicles,” said Yongcheol Bae, Executive Vice President of Memory Product Planning Team at Samsung Electronics. “The next-generation graphics DRAM will be brought to market in line with industry demand and we plan on continuing our leadership in the space.”

Samsung’s GDDR7 achieves an impressive bandwidth of 1.5-terabytes-per-second (TBps), which is 1.4 times that of GDDR6’s 1.1TBps and features a boosted speed per pin of up to 32Gbps. The enhancements are made possible by the Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM3) signaling method adopted for the new memory standard instead of the Non Return to Zero (NRZ) from previous generations. PAM3 allows 50% more data to be transmitted than NRZ within the same signaling cycle.

Significantly, in comparison with GDDR6, the latest design is 20% more energy efficient with power-saving design technology optimized for high-speed operations. For applications especially mindful of power usage, such as laptops, Samsung offers a low-operating voltage option.

To minimize heat generation, an epoxy molding compound (EMC) with high thermal conductivity is used for the packaging material in addition to IC architecture optimization. These improvements dramatically reduce thermal resistance by 70% in comparison to GDDR6, aiding in stable product performance even in conditions with high-speed operations.

“With the recent proliferation of electric vehicles and the rapid advancement of infotainment and autonomous driving systems, the semiconductor automotive platform is facing a paradigm shift. What used to be a seven to eight-year replacement cycle is now being compressed into a three to four-year cycle, and at the same time, performance and capacity requirements are advancing to levels commonly found in servers,” said Jinman Han, Executive Vice President and Head of Memory Global Sales & Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung’s reinforced lineup of memory solutions will act as a major catalyst in further accelerating the shift toward the ‘Server on Wheels’ era.”

Advanced features in infotainment systems such as high-definition maps, video streaming and 3D gaming, together with the growing use of autonomous driving systems, have been driving the demand for high-capacity, high-performance SSDs and graphics DRAM throughout the automotive industry.

In 2017, Samsung was the first in the industry to introduce UFS solutions for automotive applications. Today, the company is well-positioned to provide a total memory solution with the new automotive SSD and GDDR6 DRAM.

Samsung’s 256GB BGA SSD controller and firmware are developed in-house for optimized performance, offering a sequential read speed of 2,100 megabytes per second (MB/s) and a sequential write speed of 300MB/s, which are seven and two times faster than today’s eMMC, respectively. Furthermore, the 2GB GDDR6 DRAM features up to a 14 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) data rate per pin. Such exceptional speeds and bandwidth will support complex processing of various multimedia applications as well as large amounts of autonomous driving data, contributing to a safer, more dynamic and more convenient driving experience.

In addition, Samsung’s new automotive solutions meet the AEC-Q100 qualification — the global automotive reliability standard — allowing them to operate stably in extreme temperatures ranging from -40°C to +105°C, which is an especially crucial requirement for automotive semiconductors.

Recently, sensor deployment in autonomous vehicles to continuously monitor immediate surroundings has been increasing, and high-speed processing to interpret and predict this data for safer driving is becoming critically important. By introducing automotive memory solutions previously championed in servers and AI accelerators, Samsung is helping to pave the way for safer autonomous driving.

Having already completed customer evaluations, the new automotive memory products are currently in mass production.