More on ATI's GDDR3

If there's one thing graphics chipmakers crave, it's infinite memory bandwidth. GPUs have grown their capacity, complexity and bandwidth demands at breakneck speed, but memory has failed to match this growth, and often keeps GPUs from achieving their full potential. Not content to retrofit higher-clocked system memory to meet 3D graphics' insatiable bandwidth appetite, Canadian GPU maker ATI today unveiled a new specification it is calling Graphics DDR3, or GDDR3.

ATI worked with major memory manufacturers to bring the GDDR3 spec to fruition, and according to ATI, the spec takes the existing DDR-400 and DDR2 specs and makes enhancements and improvements to make GDDR3 memory more suitable for present and future graphics processing. Current DDR memories top out at 400MHz, allowing for a theoretical peak bandwidth of 23.8GB/sec on a 256-bit memory interface, which ATI's Radeon 9700, Matrox's Parhelia and 3DLabs' P10 GPU all possess. GDDR3 will start with a clock rate of 500MHz, and according to ATI, the spec allows headroom to take memory clocks to 800MHz, or 1.6GHz effective clock, which would yield a whopping 47.7GB/sec of peak memory bandwidth.

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