Micron has begun mass production of gddr5x memory

Memory manufacturer Micron has started mass production of gddr5x memory. Nvidia uses the new memory type on its GeForce GTX 1080 video card, which will be released at the end of May. Earlier, Micron said it would not start mass production until the summer.

Mass production seems to have started earlier than expected. In February, Micron reported making the first test chips and expected to start mass production in the summer. The company now writes in a blog that mass production has already started.

Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1080 has 8GB gddr5x memory, with a speed of 1250MHz, good for a data throughput of 10Gbit/s. Micron reported in February that 13Gb/s was achieved with the first early test chips. According to the memory manufacturer, the maximum potential of gddr5x is 16Gbit/s.

In practice, the first generation of new memory chips is often tuned quite conservatively in terms of speed. That also seems to be the case with the memory on the GTX 1080. Variants with faster clocked memory may appear later.

Gddr5x memory currently has a lower clock speed than what is possible with gddr5, but because the prefetch buffer is twice as large, the throughput is doubled. Due to the lower clock speed, gddr5x is more economical than gddr5.