JEDEC is the organization in charge of defining the standards of RAM memories. They were a little late but we finally have the official specifications for the new DDR5 SDRAM standard. A new standard that considerably improves some features compared to the current DDR4.
In an official announcement released these days, the association claims that the new specs will provide developers with twice the power in performance and lower power consumption compared to the current standard. To achieve this, significant improvements have been made in the internal architecture of DDR5 memories, let's see some of them.
It is one of the most interesting sections that can be found between DDR4 and DDR5. Improvements in the prefetch architecture refer to the number of data that can be read at a time in terms of units. So 1n would read 1 data unit, 2n would double that number, and so on.
This is commonly described within a data buffer for prefetch, which always refers to 1n based precisely on SDRAM. DDR4 is 8n versus SDRAM, but DDR5 will increase that figure to 16n.
One of the main goals in designing DDR5 as a standard has been to enable performance scaling without degrading channel efficiency at high speeds. To achieve this, the maximum density of dies has been quadrupled, reaching 64 gigabytes. The burst length has been doubled to BL16 and so has the memory bank count from 16 to 32. Each DIMM handles two 32-bit memory channels instead of one 64-bit memory. Outcome? Better efficiency per channel and two independent subchannels to ensure reliability in addition to efficiency.
Of the most notable improvements also highlights the fact that the demand for energy consumption is now regulated with an integrated voltage regulator. Previously these were located on the motherboard and not in the memory itself. Since the new DDR5 standard allows regulators to be incorporated in principle we should see a simplification in the motherboards. The new DDR5s now consume 1.1 volts compared to 1.2 volts for DDR4s.
If we go to the maximum data rates they achieve, the DDR5 reaches 6.4 Gbps, which is practically double that of DDR4. Of course, they indicate that the initial modules will reach the market with a limit of 4.8 Gbps.
The first consumer products with DDR5 specifications are expected to arrive in 2021. But of course, it will always depend on how manufacturers decide to adapt and bet on it. Currently, the JEDEC consortium is made up of representatives of more than 300 companies in the sector that, in principle, are interested in adapting the new technology.
DDR5 aims to be the next generation RAM, the RAM for the next few years. We will have to see once it arrives what are the improvements in practice and not only on paper. Although as indicated by JEDEC, it has also been designed with the cloud computing and artificial intelligence industry in mind.
As always, it depends. We have already mentioned the determining factor that is the price, but finally it will happen as with all the technologies that are updated: the previous one will disappear (it is what has long since happened with the DDR3, impossible to find it in stores and we can only buy DDR4) . For this reason, in the end whether we want to or not, we will have to adopt the technology unless we endure DDR4 long enough until DDR6 comes out.
Answering the question, initially it will not be worth updating. We will have better performance and less consumption, yes, but the change will not be substantial enough to be a reason for updating the platform (and less with what it entails, since we are not only talking about changing the RAM but also the motherboard and processor ). After time, when it becomes standardized, we will be talking about other terms.