Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest maker of memory, announced that it had developed GDDR4 memory chips that can operate at speed of 3.20GHz, nearly two times higher compared to memory frequency on today’s graphics cards.

“With such phenomenal processing speed, we’re able to offer video card manufacturers the bandwidth for incredibly life-like movements and richly textured imagery that will soon rival that of cinematic movies,” said Mueez Deen, marketing director, graphics memory and mobile DRAM, Samsung Semiconductor.

The GDDR4 memory chips with 0.6ns access time capable of working at 3.20GHz resulting frequency are made using 80nm process technology and have 512Mb capacity. Late in 2005 Samsung introduced 256Mb GDDR4 chips rated to work at 2.50GHz. Voltage and heat characteristics were not touched upon by the company.

GDDR4 memory is intended for graphics sub-systems and other multimedia-oriented devices that require high-speed memory and can use point-to-point memory interconnect.

It will take some time before developers of graphics processors and their memory controllers will be able to utilize 3.20GHz memory, as GDDR4 final spec is yet to be ratified, whereas graphics chips are usually tailored for particular range of memory speeds.

Market watchers predict that sales of graphics chips will reach $2.7 billion this year, up 10% from $2.5 billion in 2005. Further, the graphics DRAM market is forecast to grow 27% year this year to $1.9 billion from $1.5 billion, Samsung indicated.