DDR4 Speculative Launch Dates and Performance

DDR4 rumors have been swelling the internet since around 2008 when DDR4 began development.  Yes, can you believe it?  DDR4 has been in development for 5 years now.  Fortunately for us it appears it is finally just around the corner.  With the current rumor round-up, we should have full DDR4 support by early 2014.  For you non skeptical type people, check out what we have to look for in DDR4 below.  For you skeptics, well.. wait?

Performance

• Between 20% and 30% less power than DDR3 –  Current reports say that DDR4 will consume between 20% and 30% less power than DDR3.  Meaning that enthusiast can clock them even higher, or use less power, whichever may be desired.  (Reports on power consumption so far have been conflicting.  Some say up to 20%, other say 30%)
• Data rates are rumored to be at 4800 Mhz or 2,400MT/s – A “50%” improvement over DDR3.  I say “50%” because the latest DDR3 hit 3000Mhz, which is hardly 50%.
• Faster burst access due to smaller row sizes.
• Improvements in the RAM’s fault detection, multi-core systems, and multi-threaded applications.

Digging deep

An 8GB x4 DDR3 module, which contains 8 memory banks, and has a 4bit wide data bus interface, contains 2048B of DRAM cells per row, for a total of 65536B of DRAM.  In comparison, an 8GB x4 DDR4 module has 4 memory banks, with an additional 4 memory banks stored in each bank group.  It also contains a 4bit wide data bus interface, however due to the configurations of the memory bank, 8GB of DDR4 contains 131,072B of DRAM, or 512B of DRAM cells per row.  Because DDR4 memory has significantly smaller row sizes than DDR3, it is capable of cycling through memory banks at an increased rate.  In theory DDR4 SDRAM is capable of reaching a maximum capacity of 128GB within a single memory module.

Launch Dates

Crucial demoed DDR4 during CES 2013, and says they’ll be ready for release late 2013.  That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be able to pick it up and toss it in your board at that time.  Rumors suggest boards capable of supporting DDR4 SDRAM won’t be available until early 2014.  Either way, if you’re the type to plan out your future builds, this may be a good road map to decide when to upgrade.  No other launch dates have been as credible as Crucial’s, and I’m sure other manufacturers aren’t going to let Crucial be the only ones to release DDR4 in 2013.

 

DDR4 Release information was leaked in a recent Intel roadmap showing support with Haswell-E.

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