Samsung Electronics announced it has begin sampling of its GDDR4 memory chips with certain designers of graphics processors. The new generation of memory for graphics cards is expected to deliver speeds of up to 2.80GHz or even higher and reach the market in mid-2006.

GDDR4 is the fourth generation of memory chips designed specifically for graphics cards and tailored for point-to-point interconnection and extremely high speeds. In order to achieve speeds of 2.50GHz – 2.80GHz, Samsung Electronics has used technologies called DBI (Data Bus Inversion) and Multi-Preamble that eliminate all data transmission delay, according to the company.

Currently Samsung produces 256Mb GDDR4 chips that are rated to run at 2.50GHz. The company said it would release 2.80GHz GDDR4 flavour by the end of the year. Samsung plans to initiate mass production of the GDDR4 in the Q2 2006.

While GDDR4 offers unprecedented speed, it retains a design virtually identical to that of GDDR3. This minimizes inconvenience to graphics card and chipset manufacturers in developing new products. Currently ATI’s RADEON X1800-series visual processing units already support GDDR4 by its innovative Ring-bus memory controller.