Samsung told the Hot Chips technology conference in Cupertino this week, and placed GDDR6 firmly in 2018 and not 2017 as widely expected.

This is a bit of a shame as it will provide a connection between memory and GPU of more than 14Gbps. This means that the standard will provide total memory bandwidth of up to 512GBps via a 256-bit memory bus, and up to 786GBps on a 384-bit wide memory bus. Micron’s GDDR5X is currently the record holder on that benchmark with a bandwidth of up to 12Gbps.

Another key feature is that GDDR6 will slash power consumption by about 20 percent.

It will probably not even be 2018 before the tech shows up on a GPU most of us can use. It will first be seen in the ultra-high-end machines which are beyond most users' price range. It is unlikely to appear in a mainstream computer for a year or two after that.

Nvidia has just got its paws on GDDR5X and stuck it under the bonnet of its GeForce GTX 1080 in May. AMD put out the Radeon 400 series in response based on the company's 14nm Polaris GPU.
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