Samsung has announced that it has developed the industry's first 512GB DDR5 memory module using through-silicon via (TSV) technology. With the help of TSV approach - which is helpful for interconnecting 3D-stacked silicon chips -, Samsung will be stacking eight layers of 16Gb DRAM chips to offer up to 512GB capacity on a single module. In terms of speed, it is claimed to transfer data at the rate of 7200Mbps. This high-capacity memory has been designed for intensive computing workloads including supercomputing, AI/ML processing, and data analytics.
To ensure power efficiency, High-K Metal Gate (HKMG) technology has been used. With its help, Samsung has been able to significantly reduce the leakage current that would arise as an outcome of the continuous thinning of the insulation layer as DRAM designs become smaller and finer. As a result of the reduction in leakage, the operating current required also gets reduced, making the new memory very power-efficient. In fact, the company claims that its new DRAM is 13% less power-hungry compared to non-HKMG designs.
While HKMG technology has generally been used in logic-based semiconductors like processors, Samsung has made use of the tech in-memory as well when it previously applied it in its GDDR6 chip designing in 2018, and now it has also incorporated HKMG in its DDR5 design philosophy as well. You can find out more about the memory module here.
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