Micron to launch GDDR6 memory and denser NAND Flash memory this year

Robert Sole 5 February, 2017

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Micron will introduce GDDR6 memories this year, higher density in 3D NAND memories and expects a growth in the use of NAND Flash over DRAM.

We know that AMD bet on the HBM2 in AMD VEGA graphics cards, but it has been announced that Micron would be working on the development of GDDR6 memories. Micron has very mature 3-layer 32D NAND memory production and is a product in high demand. The company would have made the leap to the production of 3-layer 64D NAND memories that would reach the market at the end of December of this same, thus achieving an 80% increase in capacity in GB per wafer and cost reduction by a 30%.

The memory for graphics would also be being modified by Micron, which would work on the transition from 20nm to a '1x nm' system, which according to forecasts would be 16nm. This would improve the price of the GB of memory and it would be used in GDDR5 memories with this 16nm lithograph later this year. We have on the other hand the GDDR5X memories, which are growing in demand due to the use in the NVIDIA GTX 1080 and the Titan X Pascal and predictably in the GTX 1080Ti, which has not yet seen the light.

Among the benefits of GDDR6 memories, is doubling the bandwidth with respect to GDDR5, which will become 16GB / s, although the improvement with respect to GDDR5X, which has a bandwidth of 12Gb / s is of only 25%. Another important memory is consumption, which improves by 20% compared to current memories. Although it is good news, the need to opt for this type of memory is not fully understood when the HBM2 offers better features and performance, as well as saving space on the graphics card PCB and less if we think about the fact that the HBM3 are already in a fairly advanced stage of development.

Micron would be ready to make the leap to GDDR6 at the end of this year or early 2018. The company for this would be working on the development and production of solutions under 3D XPoint in its subsidiary QuantX. This work is already being carried out and would be seen in the second or third generation of memories, according to Micron's specifications, in a planning until now unknown on these products, but that would see the light in theory this year, probably around November or December.

Regarding the operation of the market, Micron talks about the fact that in the coming months the volatility of the memory market should be reduced, reducing the need for DRAM and opting more for NAND Flash in that market. Despite brands struggling to acquire memory and the unstoppable rise in prices, Micron expects increased production volume and lower DRAM and NAND Flash production costs in the coming years.

Not only this, since the company expects a significant increase in sales of NAND Flash, faster than DRAM, which is logical, since DRAM is slower than NAND Flash memories. Micron knows that DRAMs are its most important niche, but expects a turnaround towards NAND Flash in the coming years. Not only that, Micron expects growth of at least 2.5 times over growth over the rest of the semiconductor industry.