Samsung unveils lightening quick Flashbolt DRAM chips

Next generation HBM2E DRAM chip knocks predecessor Aquabolt’s transfer rate and capacity out of the park

Samsung has announced new high bandwidth DRAM chips called Flashbolt at NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose.

Flashbolt is based on Samsung’s new High Bandwidth Memory system (HBM2E), which it says is 33 percent faster than the previous generation, HBM2.

The new HBM2E model delivers up to 3.2Gbps signal rate per pin, a marked increase over last year’s Aquabolt, which supported a transfer rate of 2.4Gbps.

Capacity on Flashbolt has also increased to 16Gb per die, double the density of the previous generation. In total, this means a single Samsung stack can now offer 410GB/s of memory bandwidth and 16GB of capacity.

Samsung is pitting Flashbolt for use supercomputers, GPUs, and developing AI models.

AI training requires the fast processing of massive pools of data. Limited DRAM capacity in AI servers has previously been cited as holding back the next generation of AI applications.

“Flashbolt’s industry-leading performance will enable enhanced solutions for next-generation data centres, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and graphics applications,” said Jinman Han, senior vice president of the memory product planning and application engineering team at Samsung Electronics.

“We will continue to expand our premium DRAM offering, and improve our ‘high-performance, high capacity, and low power’ memory segment to meet market demand.”

Samsung did not reveal when the new technology will become commercially available.