Hynix Semiconductor, a leading producer of advanced memory chips, has announced its first samples of GDDR5 memory chips to be used in graphics cards or game consoles. Hynix is the second memory manufacturer to create such chips and currently expects to start GDDR5 mass production in the first half of 2008.

Just like in case of Qimonda’s first GDDR5 memory chips, the initial GDDR5 from Hynix will be available with data rates up to 20GB/s per component (5000MHz, or 5GHz, in case of a memory chip with 32-bit memory bus), which is more than double the bandwidth of the fastest GDDR3 and GDDR4 memories today. Hynix’s GDDR5 memory chips come with 1Gb densities, meaning that eight of such chips may power a 1GB graphics card with 160GB/s bandwidth.  

The newly introduced GDDR5 is built on the company’s 66nm process technology and designed to minimize power consumption. In addition to its small form factor and power saving characteristics, Hynix’s GDDR5 features time delay adjustments, error correction and jitter control technology enabling more robust system designs.

Hynix plans to start mass production of GDDR5 in the first half of next year to meet the increasing demand for high performance graphics DRAM.

With its improved speed and power characteristics, GDDR5 is projected to succeed GDDR3 and dominate the graphics DRAM market from the second half of 2008.