AMD & JEDEC Working On DDR5 MRDIMM Adoption As An Open-Standard: Up To 17,600 MB/s Memory Speeds By 203X

AMD & JEDEC Working On DDR5 MRDIMM Adoption As An Open-Standard: Up To 17,600 MB/s Memory Speeds By 203X 1

During Memcon 2023, AMD revealed its full commitment to the JEDEC MRDIMM DDR5 memory standard which will let bandwidth take a huge leap for future data centers.

The presentation showcased an existing solution to provide double the data rater using DDR5 Buffered DIMMs. The concept is to take two DDR5 DIMMs running at 4400 MB/s speeds & have simultaneous access to both ranks together to effectively double the data rate to the host.

This process is done by using DIMM modules with a special data bugger/mux to convert 2 DDRs (DDR5 DIMMs) into a single QDR, offering 8800 MB/s speeds. It is revealed that this technique is promising to solve native DRAM speed scaling challenges such as:

Buffer latency offset by higher transfer speed

Price premium needs to be minimal for broad adoption

But a true next-gen solution is also mentioned in the form of MRDIMM or Multi-Ranked Buffered DIMMs which utilize DDR5 DRAM. The MRDIMMs leverage an existing, backward-compatible, and laterally compatible DDR5 supply chain.

The Need for DDR6 DRAM for MRDIMMs is yet unclear due to their value proposition since it's still early but the DRAM Scaling roadmap shows that after DDR5-6400 DIMMs, JEDEC and its partners expect the utilization of 1st Gen MRDIMM DDR5 modules that are rated at up to 8800 MB/s out of the box.

Great couple of days at the first Memcon in San Jose this week.

Was great to see the industry alignment on JEDEC MRDIMM for future memory bandwidth needs. AMD is completely behind working in JEDEC to drive industry open standards.#memcon #MRDIMM #JEDE…https://t.co/xwe60tg48N

— Robert Hormuth (@rhormuth) March 30, 2023

The second generation of this solution is said to offer 12,800 MB/s speeds while the third gen that is expected sometime in 2030 will offer up to 17,600 MB/s speeds. The official JEDEC standard had DDR5 peaking at around 8400 MB/s transfer speeds so which is more than double for the RDIMM memory however, it will be years before we get to see those in action. A few days ago, Intel posted a demo of its Granite Rapids Xeon CPUs running up to DDR5-8000 MCR RDIMM which is super-fast and coming in 2024.

AMD has also made full commitments to following the JEDEC MRDIMM standard so it is very likely we get to see future EPYC CPUs utilizing these really fast DRAM solutions. The AMD SP5 socket for EPYC CPUs has already listed up to DDR5-6400 speeds for future chips. More on that here.

News Source: RetiredEnginner