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Next-Generation DDR5 RAM Will Double the Speed of DDR4 In 2018 (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: You may have just upgraded your computer to use DDR4 recently or you may still be using DDR3, but in either case, nothing stays new forever. JEDEC, the organization in charge of defining new standards for computer memory, says that it will be demoing the next-generation DDR5 standard in June of this year and finalizing the standard sometime in 2018. DDR5 promises double the memory bandwidth and density of DDR4, and JEDEC says it will also be more power-efficient, though the organization didn't release any specific numbers or targets. Like DDR4 back when it was announced, it will still be several years before any of us have DDR5 RAM in our systems. That's partly because the memory controllers in processors and SoCs need to be updated to support DDR5, and these chips normally take two or three years to design from start to finish. DDR4 RAM was finalized in 2012, but it didn't begin to go mainstream until 2015 when consumer processors from Intel and others added support for it. DDR5 has no relation to GDDR5, a separate decade-old memory standard used for graphics cards and game consoles.
This is completely unnecessary. It's a money grab for greedy dorks to extract money from everyone else. What a useless waste!
Is the acronym "DDR" really still applicable? I remember back when it came out thinking we were going to see QDR and ODR come out next and next. I guess the naming convention folks just got lazy and started tacking on revision numbers.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
Article summary: "DDR5 is coming and it is going to be faster than DDR4"
That's it. No technical details at all. Will it be point to point? If not, how many ranks? What voltage? What sort of termination? Will there even be DIMMs?
You won't find answers to any of those questions in TFA or any page linked from the TFA. The only significant piece of information is confirmation that JEDEC has not given up on DDR.
This is why I feel no great interest in upgrading to DDR4 (or DDR5). Once you have 64GB of RAM and are no longer touching the HDD for virtual memory, the speed changes between DDR3 and DDR5 for all but the most arcane applications is negligible, and video card is going to give you bigger bang for your buck in gaming/VR/AR/CAD/Video editing and the like.
(Geek note: yes, yes I know it is not universal, thus the generalization. You spend $600 on DDR5 Ram and I will spend $350 on a video card and we will see who comes out ahead.)
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like