DDR5 Launch

It's official: first DDR5 launched courtesy of SK hynix (and the rest surely soon to follow).

 

Nice, but the table is wrong - regular DDR3 was available with 8Gb capacity...

 

Hmm... Without more details, it's hard telling what the intent was. I believe the table may be listing the JEDEC specs of each memory tech as of its original launch date, since at the launch of DDR3 (2008) was only 4GB max module size

 

Even 16GB modules exist.

https://www.amazon.com/OWC-PC3-12800-1600MHz-SO-DIMM-OWC1600DDR3S64S/dp/B077XZJ76M

 

The chart is referring to single RAM chip size, not module capacity - hence the Gb (gigabit), not GB (gigabyte). 16Gb DDR4 chips weren't available at DDR4 launch either, iirc...

... and those 16GB modules are composed of 16x 8Gb RAM chips per module, like the one pictured.

p.s. sorry for being a bore, I just couldn't resist. =p

 

Again, more context with the table would be helpful, but it still looks like it is data at time of release.

Now, I don't have an eidetic memory, but maybe some searching would help:

For DDR3, See Figure 1 for module size, and Figure 3 which does have 4Gb as "size" - https://www.simmtester.com/News/PublicationArticle/162

For DDR4, all I can find is the original DDR4 spec ( JESD 79-4 DDR4 SDRAM) was released in September 2012. And a search on that is "purpose of this Standard is to define the minimum set of requirements for JEDEC compliant 2 Gb through 16 Gb for x4, x8, and x16 DDR4 SDRAM devices. " - https://www.jedec.org/document_search?search_api_views_fulltext=jesd79-4 ddr4


Not sayin' I'm 100% correct, as this is just a "best guess."

 

Apparently I wasn’t reading close enough!

 

table was straight from the sk hynix press release on their own website as linked in op

 

Well, maybe Hynix missed the 8Gb DDR3 train so hard, they deny these chips exist to this day. (=

I regret raising this topic...

 

difference of a factor of 8...

Table is simply the JEDEC Standard specification, which is defined by Gb not GB.

16 Gb DDR3 would have been impressive indeed...

 

Those do exist in sodimm form for laptop ddr3. Some company named "intelligent memory" if I recall made them by literally double stacking ram dies.

 

no, once again, GB =/= Gb

The distinction is very important...(also important is that the giga- prefix itself has multiple definitions across different use cases, although luckily in this context we don't need to worry about that: giga=billion here, by convention and by JEDEC definition: "The JEDEC terms dictionary includes definitions for prefixes kibi (Ki), mebi (Mi), gibi (Gi) and tebi (Ti) as powers of 2, and kilo, mega, giga and tera as powers of 10.")

This is about the unit measurement itself, however, not the prefix; the b vs the B is no typo or formatting error...this is a critical difference of:

One billion bits vs one billion bytes

There's 8 bits in 1 byte

Confusingly, RAM is labelled and marketed as GB because the bigger number is better for business

However the RAM is produced and technically defined by Gb -- the specification used by manufacturers to meet JEDEC Standard which is defined in Gb not GB:

"The JEDEC DDR3 SDRAM standard JESD-79-3d uses Mb and Gb to specify binary memory capacity: " The purpose of this Standard is to define the minimum set of requirements for JEDEC compliant 512 Mb through 8 Gb for x4, x8, and x16 DDR3 SDRAM devices.""

As the Intelligent Memory website details:

"I'M Intelligent Memory offers the first SO-DIMM memory modules with 16 Gigabyte DDR3 on a single module, alternatively with or without ECC capability. These ultra-high density modules by I'M are based on our 8Gb DDR3 memory IC."

 

Looks like crucial also made them as well, in a limited production run it seems. I remember these chips caused a few people grief back in the day for funny reasons. Oh the corporate world...

 

Intel CPUs older than Broadwell didn't work with 16GB modules. Broadwell, Skylake (some machines still used DDR3 instead of DDR4 or LPDDR3), AMD APUs of that era worked with them just fine.

It was technically possible to patch Haswell microcode to work with these sticks (and was done for one desktop motherboard), but since it was an old product already, nobody bothered.