The Gigahertz race may be over in the microprocessor space, but its is alive and kicking in the memory segment. Therefore Samsung Electronics is using a more advanced production method to push graphics memory chips to a higher speed. The new GDDR4 memory, a memory type that so far has only been in use in ATI's Radeon X1950 graphics cards, bumps the clock speed to 2000 MHz, up 66% from 1100 and 1200 MHz memory in today's high-end cards. Accordingly, the data transfer of the memory climbs from currently 2.4 Gb/s to 4 Gb/s.

It managed to make the higher speed chips by using 80 nanometer production technology. A nanometer is a millionth of a millimeter and the measurement refers to the size of the smallest feature on a chip's surface. As these sizes get smaller, chips can be made more compact, use less energy and work at higher speeds.

Samsung's first 4Gbps GDDR4 memory will be a 512Mb chip. The South Korean company will begin offering sample chips to customers this month and mass production will come later this year.

written by Robert M.