Micron GDDR6X accelerates photorealistic 3D experiences at 1 terabyte per second, rates once thought impossible

BOISE, Ida­ho, Sept. 01, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Micron Tech­no­lo­gy, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU), today announ­ced the world’s fas­test dis­crete gra­phics memo­ry solu­ti­on, GDDR6X, the first to power sys­tem band­width up to 1 tera­byte per second (TB/s). Working with visu­al com­pu­ting tech­no­lo­gy lea­der NVIDIA, Micron debut­ed GDDR6X in the new NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3090 and GeForce RTX 3080 gra­phics pro­ces­sing units (GPUs), which are tail­o­red to sup­port the fast speeds that immersi­ve, high-per­for­mance gam­ing appli­ca­ti­ons demand.

“Our mul­ti­le­vel signal­ing inno­va­ti­on in GDDR6X has shat­te­red con­ven­tio­nal band­width limits, clo­cking record-brea­king speeds,” said Tom Eby, seni­or vice pre­si­dent and gene­ral mana­ger of the Com­pu­te & Net­wor­king Busi­ness Unit at Micron. “Unli­ke tra­di­tio­nal memo­ry, GDDR6X has unpar­al­le­led data rates that can keep pace with gam­ing inno­va­ti­on and data-hun­gry appli­ca­ti­ons — set­ting a new stan­dard for gra­phics memory.”

Micron’s GDDR6X ser­ves as a powerful enabler of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 and GeForce RTX 3080 gra­phics cards’ per­for­mance. Buil­ding on its most recent col­la­bo­ra­ti­on with NVIDIA for the GeForce RTX gra­phics card (enab­led by GDDR6), Micron trans­forms the memory/GPU inter­face with GDDR6X, acce­le­ra­ting per­for­mance on com­plex gra­phics workloads across next-gene­ra­ti­on gam­ing applications.

“With the unpre­ce­den­ted speed of GDDR6X, Micron has deli­ver­ed tomorrow’s memo­ry tech­no­lo­gy today, and it’s at the heart of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 and 3080 GPUs — hel­ping us deli­ver rich, rea­li­stic, cine­ma­tic user expe­ri­en­ces,” said Jeff Fisher, seni­or vice pre­si­dent of the GPU Busi­ness Unit at NVIDIA. “Buil­ding on a histo­ry of col­la­bo­ra­ti­on that star­ted with GDDR5, we’re thril­led to have reinven­ted the memory/GPU inter­face with Micron, set­ting a new bar for high-per­for­mance, high-reso­lu­ti­on gaming.”

As PC gam­ing evol­ves in sophisti­ca­ti­on, gamers today demand the hig­hest per­for­mance for their advan­ced gra­phics cards — a requi­si­te for smooth ani­ma­ti­on, sharp visu­als, 8K reso­lu­ti­on and real-time ray tra­cing, a ren­de­ring tech­ni­que that results in rea­li­stic light reflec­tions and cine­ma­tic effects. GDDR6X’s ground­brea­king speed offers dis­cer­ning gamers high-reso­lu­ti­on expe­ri­en­ces with maxi­mum frame rates and instant ren­de­ring, allo­wing users to expe­ri­ence high­ly rea­li­stic and reac­ti­ve effects wit­hout jar­ring lags. Com­bi­ned with NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3090 and GeForce RTX 3080 GPUs, GDDR6X’s ultra-band­width capa­bi­li­ties impro­ve real-time ray tra­cing and neu­ral gra­phics pro­ces­sing to crea­te pho­to­rea­li­stic and immersi­ve vir­tu­al worlds in PC games.

The new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs — the second gene­ra­ti­on of the NVIDIA RTX PC gam­ing plat­form — fea­ture new ray tra­cing cores, Ten­sor Cores and strea­ming mul­tipro­ces­sors. The results are stun­ning visu­als, ama­zin­gly fast frame rates and arti­fi­ci­al intel­li­gence acce­le­ra­ti­on for games and crea­ti­ve appli­ca­ti­ons. Powered by the NVIDIA Ampere archi­tec­tu­re, which deli­vers increa­ses of up to 1.9 times per­for­mance-per-watt over the pre­vious gene­ra­ti­on, the RTX 30 Series effort­less­ly powers gra­phics expe­ri­en­ces at all reso­lu­ti­ons, even up to 8K. The series repres­ents the grea­test GPU gene­ra­tio­nal leap in NVIDIA’s history.

Bey­ond the Bina­ry: First to Imple­ment PAM4 in Memo­ry, Micron Sets New Benchmark

Micron achie­ved GDDR6X’s breakth­rough band­width by app­ly­ing inno­va­ti­ve signal trans­mis­si­on tech­no­lo­gy, four-level pul­se ampli­tu­de modu­la­ti­on (PAM4), to revo­lu­tio­ni­ze how memo­ry moves data. Sin­ce 2006, Micron’s engi­neers and rese­ar­chers have explo­red app­ly­ing mul­ti­le­vel signal­ing to the memo­ry inter­face. Over 45 patents later, Micron is the first in the indus­try to imple­ment PAM4 in memo­ry, crea­ting a new bench­mark for future gene­ra­ti­ons of gra­phics memory.

By using PAM4 mul­ti­le­vel signal­ing tech­ni­ques, GDDR6X trans­fers data much fas­ter, doubling the input/output (I/O) data rate. Until now, gra­phics memo­ry was cap­ped at 64 giga­bytes per second (GB/s), trans­mit­ting one bit per cycle through the tra­di­tio­nal bina­ry stan­dard, which reli­es on two signal levels to trans­mit data encoded as 1s or 0s. Ins­tead, Micron’s novel PAM4 tech­ni­que employs four distinct levels to trans­mit two bits of data to and from the memo­ry at a time. As a result, Micron’s GDDR6X dra­ma­ti­cal­ly increa­ses memo­ry band­width to 84 GB/s for each com­po­nent, trans­la­ting to sys­tem band­width of up to 1 TB/s — rates once thought impossible.

Micron’s GDDR6X is also the only memo­ry device using PAM4 that can be desi­gned and built in mass pro­duc­tion volu­mes, brin­ging cut­ting-edge I/O rese­arch to mar­ket. With its board design and pack­a­ging careful­ly fine-tun­ed for sim­pli­ci­ty by Micron’s gra­phics memo­ry experts, GDDR6X offers cus­to­mers easy imple­men­ta­ti­on and less manu­fac­tu­ring com­ple­xi­ty than other high-band­width solu­ti­ons on the mar­ket. Nota­b­ly, GDDR6X dou­bles the data rate in a chan­nel wit­hout doubling the requi­red ope­ra­ting fre­quen­cy, crea­ting a smooth, real-time expe­ri­ence for gamers.

In addi­ti­on, GDDR6X deli­vers lower power per tran­sac­tion (pJ/bit) than pre­vious gene­ra­ti­ons, making it ide­al for ener­gy-sap­ping workloads like gam­ing and other high-band­width gra­phics appli­ca­ti­ons, which demand both light­ning fast and low-power memo­ry. GDDR6X also fea­tures the abili­ty to sca­le power down or up, allo­wing users to dial back per­for­mance to save energy.

Avai­la­bi­li­ty

The GeForce RTX 3080 is available for purcha­se start­ing Sept. 17, and the GeForce RTX 3090 is available start­ing Sept. 24 on NVIDIA’s web­site. Both will be available as cus­tom boards, inclu­ding stock-clo­cked and fac­to­ry-over­clo­cked models from top add-in card pro­vi­ders and in gam­ing sys­tems from lea­ding OEMs and sys­tem builders.

GDDR6X is now available as part of Micron’s new Ultra-Band­width Solu­ti­ons port­fo­lio. Micron deli­vers GDDR6X memo­ry in 8 giga­bits (Gb) den­si­ty, with speeds of 19 to 21 Gb/s. Start­ing in 2021, 16Gb den­si­ty units will be added. Part­ners and cus­to­mers inte­res­ted in explo­ring GDDR6X for their high-per­for­mance solu­ti­ons — whe­ther for gam­ing, arti­fi­ci­al intel­li­gence infe­rence or pro­fes­sio­nal visua­liza­ti­on — can find out more here.

Resour­ces

• NVIDIA press release: NVIDIA Deli­vers Grea­test Ever Gene­ra­tio­nal Leap in Per­for­mance With GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs
• NVIDIA announce­ment replay: GeForce Spe­cial Event Replay with NVIDIA CEO Jen­sen Huang
• NVIDIA GeForce fea­ture sto­ry: Intro­du­cing the RTX 30 Series Gra­phics Cards
• Micron blog: GDDR6X: Memo­ry Reimagined
• Micron info­gra­phic: GDDR6X Info­gra­phic
• Micron video: GDDR6X: Brin­ging Gam­ing and AI to Life
• Micron video: Fee­ding the Beast: the Making of GDDR6X
• Micron tech­ni­cal brief: Doubling I/O Per­for­mance with PAM4
• Micron tech­ni­cal brief: The Demand for Ultra-Band­width Solutions

About Micron Tech­no­lo­gy, Inc.
We are an indus­try lea­der in inno­va­ti­ve memo­ry and sto­rage solu­ti­ons. Through our glo­bal brands — Micron® and Cru­cial® — our broad port­fo­lio of high-per­for­mance memo­ry and sto­rage tech­no­lo­gies, inclu­ding DRAM, NAND, 3D XPoint™ memo­ry and NOR, is trans­forming how the world uses infor­ma­ti­on to enrich life for all. Backed by more than 40 years of tech­no­lo­gy lea­der­ship, our memo­ry and sto­rage solu­ti­ons enable dis­rup­ti­ve trends, inclu­ding arti­fi­ci­al intel­li­gence, 5G, machi­ne lear­ning and auto­no­mous vehic­les, in key mar­ket seg­ments like mobi­le, data cen­ter, cli­ent, con­su­mer, indus­tri­al, gra­phics, auto­mo­ti­ve, and net­wor­king. Our com­mon stock is traded on the Nasdaq under the MU sym­bol. To learn more about Micron Tech­no­lo­gy, Inc., visit micron.com.

© 2020 Micron Tech­no­lo­gy, Inc. All rights reser­ved. Micron, the Micron logo, and Intel­li­gence Acce­le­ra­ted are trade­marks of Micron Tech­no­lo­gy, Inc. All other trade­marks are the pro­per­ty of their respec­ti­ve owners.

 

Micron Media Rela­ti­ons Cont­act Stef­fi Lau Micron Tech­no­lo­gy, Inc. +1 (408) 834‑1618 steffilau@micron.com Micron Inves­tor Rela­ti­ons Cont­act Far­han Ahmad Micron Tech­no­lo­gy, Inc. +1 (408) 834‑1927 farhanahmad@micron.com