The JEDEC Solid State Technology Association has made a major announcement marking one of the most important milestones in computer memory development. The firm has unveiled the final specification for its next mainstream memory standard, the DDR5 SDRAM.
The new generation of DDR RAMs will once again push the limits of DDR memory, doubling peak memory speeds and significantly enhancing memory sizes as well. As always, it will arrive for servers first and desktops later.
With this development, the maximum memory speeds that reach at least 6.4Gbps and the capacity for a single LRDIMM will eventually reach 2TB. Of course, there are several smaller upgrades across the board too such as better voltage regulators etc. Here is a comparison with previous generations.
| JEDEC DDR Generations | ||||||
| DDR5 | DDR4 | DDR3 | LPDDR5 | |||
| Max Die Density | 64 Gbit | 16 Gbit | 4 Gbit | 32 Gbit | ||
| Max UDIMM Size | 128 GB | 32 GB | 8 GB | N/A | ||
| Max Data Rate | 6.4 Gbps | 3.2 Gbps | 1.6 Gbps | 6.4Gbps | ||
| Channels | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
| Width (Non-ECC) | 64-bits (2×32) | 64-bits | 64-bits | 16-bits | ||
| Banks (Per Group) |
4 | 4 | 8 | 16 | ||
| Bank Groups | 8/4 | 4/2 | 1 | 4 | ||
| Burst Length | BL16 | BL8 | BL8 | BL16 | ||
| Voltage (Vdd) | 1.1v | 1.2v | 1.5v | 1.05v | ||
| Vddq | 1.1v | 1.2v | 1.5v | 0.5v | ||
DDR5 will allow individual memory chips to reach 64Gbit density, which is 4 times higher than DDR4. The aforementioned max data rate will reach 6.4 Gbps, which is twice as much as DDR4. We will also eventually start seeing DIMM capacities reach 128GB for a typical dual-rank configuration.
As always, there are a plethora of other changes, improvements, and many technical details as well. If you want to get into those, we recommend heading over to AnandTech for a more detailed breakdown.
The adoption of DDR5 memory is not expected until 2021. As mentioned before, it will feature in servers before eventually arriving at desktop PCs.
