Micron Technology has announced a new early report regarding the production of GDDR5X memory chips. The report includes some rather impressive and promising results, while high-volume production is expected in mid-2016.

While it is still unknown when we should expect some first graphics cards with the new GDDR5X memory chips, an early report from Micron shows some promising and quite impressive results.

According to Micron, the first working silicon is ready earlier than expected and are hitting 13Gbps speed, something that is already above earlier expected results, especially if you consider that the specified performance is somewhere between 10 and 14Gbps.

Based on a 20nm manufacturing process, the first-generation 8Gb (1GB) GDDR5X chips have smaller package which was achieved with denser ball placement, reduced ball diameter and smaller ball pitch which in the end made PCB traces slightly slower. Despite the higher transfer rate of 13Gbps, Micron's new GDDR5X chips do not consume more energy compared to the GDDR5 memory, mostly due to the reduced voltage.

According to Micron, first sample dates for partners will be announced this spring while high-volume production is expected in mid-2016, or this summer.

Unfortunately, there is still no word on when we will be able to see some graphics cards with GDDR5X memory, but it appears that the implementation will be a bit more complicated than earlier expected and we expect GDDR5X to show up on mid-range and entry-level segment first, while high-end will probably be reserved for High Bandwidth Memory.






Source: Micron.com.