Micron Increasing Memory Bandwidth For Big Data With DDR5
Big data is the fuel that’s driving the new economy. Whether it’s collating online search or purchase histories, image processing and recognition, or even analyzing personal health information, big data applications are the straw that’s stirring the drink. Unfortunately, all that data is putting a strain on servers not acclimated to handle such large workloads, and developers are looking for ways to deliver faster and more memory efficient server performance. To that end, Micron Technology, Inc., a forerunner in memory and storage technologies, recently revealed it has started sampling DDR5 registered dual in-line memory modules (RDIMMs). Based on the company’s 1 nm process technology, DDR5 will provide the next generation of server farms with up to 85% better memory performance, according to the company.
DDR5 comes at a time when its predecessor, DDR4, is struggling to meet the demands of next generation big data applications. As multi-core CPU architectures have become more and more common, computing power has increased at a rate that available system memory bandwidths can’t keep up with. As a result, the industry has been trying to develop new memory architectures that can meet the bandwidth-per-core needs of today’s newer processor models. DDR4 (double data rate) synchronous DRAM has been around since 2014, and can send and receive data signals twice during a single clock cycle, as the name implies. While preceding iterations focused on reducing the size and power consumption of their predecessors, DDR5’s quest was to provide more bandwidth – while DDR4 can only manage 1600-3200 MT/s, DDR5 delivers data rates of 3200-6400 MT/s. The difference isn’t just in transfer speeds, however. When comparing relative performance at the same data rate, the DDR5 provided a 36% increase in effective bandwidth over its predecessor, a number expected to jump to 87% at the median DDR5 data rate of 4800 MT/s.
“Data center workloads will be increasingly challenged to extract value from the accelerating growth of data across virtually all applications,” according to Tom Eby, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Compute & Networking Business Unit at Micron. “The key to enabling these workloads is higher-performance, denser, higher-quality memory. Micron’s sampling of DDR5 RDIMMs represents a significant milestone, bringing the industry one step closer to unlocking the value in next-generation data-centric applications.”
Servers used in applications in the oil and gas industry, for example, will be able to perform complex computational fluid dynamics calculations more quickly when they’re not burdened by such a heavy data load. Increasing computational efficiency is the key to performing complex tasks more quickly and finding new solutions to preexisting problems.
Much like 5G is poised to usurp 4G in the world of wireless connectivity, it’s only a matter of time before DDR5 becomes the new standard for DRAMs. The need for more memory bandwidth will drive that transition, but reliability, availability and serviceability will always be in demand as well, which Micron is confident DDR5 can provide. As data centers expand and data center applications’ requirements continue to grow, DDR5 might be the hardware that steps in and fills the breach. We’ll be looking out for DDR5 promulgation and infiltration as the year, and the decade, rolls on.