Industry Expert Blogs
New 7200 MT/s RCD Supports Ambitious Server Roadmap- Rambus, Inc.Dec 28, 2023 |
We're witnessing an unprecedented time for computing. Advanced data center workloads, with Generative AI leading the pack, have set a blistering pace for hardware performance improvements. The platform vendors are responding with the most ambitious server roadmap ever seen. For example, the just introduced 5th Gen Intel® Xeon® Processor (code named Emerald Rapids) came just a year after its predecessor. The 4th Gen Xeon used 4800 MT/s DDR5 memory, 5th Gen pushed performance up with 5600 MT/s DDR5.
To support that accelerated server roadmap, Rambus, as a leader in cutting-edge memory chip solutions, needs to keep advancing the performance of its Registering Clock Drivers (RCD). The RCD is the key control plane chip on an RDIMM, providing clocks and command/address (C/A) signals to the DRAMs. It's like a conductor, keeping the symphony of memory operations in sync. Above and beyond that, the C/A signals from the RCD tell each DRAM the location and operation (read or write) for data.
Today marks another important milestone in the DDR5 journey as we announce that we have advanced the performance of our DDR5 RCD to 7200 MT/s. With a 50% increase in data rate and bandwidth over current production 4800 MT/s solutions, the Rambus 7200 MT/s DDR5 RCD enables a new level of main memory performance for data center servers. Delivering industry-leading latency and power, it offers optimized timing parameters for improved RDIMM margins.
The Rambus RCD is the flagship of our DDR5 memory interface chipset, built on over 30 years of high-performance memory experience and our company's renowned signal integrity (SI) / power integrity (PI) expertise. The chipset also includes Serial Presence Detect (SPD) Hub and Temperature Sensors, two more key components for server systems. The SPD Hub and Temperature Sensors improve DDR5 DIMM system and thermal management in order to achieve higher performance levels within the desired power envelope.
The demands on data center servers will continue their rapid rise, and memory is a critical enabler of greater server performance. As a leader in memory interface chips, customers can count on Rambus to deliver state-of-the-art solutions ahead of the market need as with our new 7200 MT/s RCD announced here.