Nvidia Corp. decided not to support GDDR4 memory standard since it was heavily inspired by ATI Technologies, now graphics products group of Advanced Micro Devices, and has been utilizing GDDR3 memory for more than four years instead. But the GDDR5 is the standard that Nvidia cannot ignore and a post on a social network web-site revealed that it will support the spec with a new graphics chip.

According to a senior signal integrity hardware engineer, he is currently working on “frame buffer simulation” of GDDR5 for “various boards” for Nvidia’s code-named GT214 graphics processing unit (GPU). Besides, he indicated on his page on LinkedIn network (which was discovered by a Beyond3D forum member), he created package and board design for the GT214 graphics chip.

The information not only reveals a code-name of a future graphics chip from Nvidia, but also points to its GDDR5 support. It is highly likely that the GT214 is aimed at mainstream market, based on the fact that the engineer used to work on code-named G84 (GeForce 8600) and G96 (GeForce 9400) products.

The fact that Nvidia wants to support GDDR5 with potentially inexpensive graphics processing unit may mean that the standard will quickly become widespread and the chips will get inexpensive enough to get installed onto mainstream products, which will inevitably drive their performance considerably up.

GDDR5 on affordable graphics cards may not be an exactly good news for dynamic random access memory (DRAM) makers, who are losing money on commodity memory chips and try to offset the loses on premium components, such as GDDR or XDR. On the other hand, quick ramp of GDDR5 standard, considering the fact that the spec is going to stay for a long time, may mean that it is not hard for memory makers to adjust their capacities for GDDR5 manufacturing.

Tags: Nvidia, Geforce, GT214, GDDR5, Samsung, Hynix, Qimonda