Samsung has begun providing graphics card companies with samples of GDDR 4 memory chips, the South Korean giant announced this week.

The 256Mb parts can transfer data at up to 2.5Gbps, up from the 1.6Gbps achieved by graphics memory currently on the market, but Samsung said it was already gearing up to offer samples capable of a 2.8Gbps data throughput by the end of the year.

The memory is based on a couple of new techniques, Samsung said, which it calls Data Bus Inversion and Multi-Preamble, without going into details. It has plenty of time to spill the beans: it doesn't expect to put GDDR 4 into mass production until Q2 2006, it said, in time for a forecast boom in high-end graphics cards coming in the second half of next year. ®

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