• Industry's best-performing graphics memory with improvement of 60% in speed, 50% in power efficiency to be mass produced in 3Q24

• GDDR7 processes data equivalent to 300 Full-HD movies in a second when combined with high-end graphics card

• AI, high-performance computing, autonomous vehicles expected to adopt GDDR7

SEOUL, South Korea, July 29, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- SK hynix Inc. (or "the company", www.skhynix.com) announced today that it introduced the industry's best-performing GDDR7*, a next-generation graphics memory product.

* Graphics DDR(GDDR): a standard specification of graphics DRAM defined by the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC) and specialized for processing graphics more quickly. Its generation has shifted from GDDR3, GDDR5, GDDR5X, GDDR6 to GDDR7. With the newer generation promising faster speed and higher power efficiency, GDDR has now become one of the most popular memory chips for AI

The development of GDDR7 in March comes amid growing interest by global customers in the AI space in the DRAM product that meets both specialized performance for graphics processing and fast speed. The company said that it will start volume production in the third quarter.

The new product comes with the operating speed of 32Gbps, a 60% improvement from the previous generation and the speed can grow up to 40Gbps depending on the circumstances. When adopted for the high-end graphics cards, the product can also process data of more than 1.5TB per second, equivalent to 300 Full-HD movies(5GB each), in a second.

SK hynix also improved power efficiency by more than 50% compared with the previous generation by adopting the new packaging technology that addresses the heat issue as a result of the ultra-fast processing of data.

The company increased the layer number of the heat-dissipating substrates from four to six, while applying the EMC** for the packaging material in a bid to reduce thermal resistance*** by 74%, compared with the previous generation, while maintaining the size of the product unchanged.

** Epoxy Molding Compound (EMC): an essential material for semiconductor packaging that protects chips from various external conditions such as water, heat, shock and charge by sealing them

*** Thermal Resistance: a measurement of a material's resistance to heat transfer that is expressed in the temperature generated by a watt. A lower thermal resistance means better heat-dissipation efficiency as heat is dissipated more easily when a different temperature is applied.

Sangkwon Lee, Head of DRAM Product Planning & Enablement at SK hynix, said that GDDR7 is expected to be adopted by a wider range of applications such as high-specification 3D graphics, AI, high-performance computing and autonomous driving.