The Next Big Thing: DDR5 RAM Officially Announced

There had been much hype for the past 2 weeks on social media regarding the arrival of the next-generation DDR5 RAM. Being an avid gamer myself, I was captivated by the news; however, I wasn’t able to find any authentic sources to confirm the news. 2 days ago, finally, JEDEC officially announced the launch of the next generation DDR5 RAM sometime in 2018. JEDEC is an organization that supervises the standards of computer memory, and has been a market leader for over 50 years. Through a press release issued on March 30th, JEDEC announced the development of the highly-anticipated DDR5 RAM. Specific details have not been released yet and industry users can learn more about this new technology at JEDEC’s server forum event to be held in June.

The next generation DDR5 RAM will incorporate stellar performance with high levels of power management and efficiency. According to JEDEC, the DDR5 will literally “double the bandwidth and density over DDR4, along with delivering improved channel efficiency. These enhancements, combined with a more user-friendly interface for server and client platforms, will enable high performance and improved power management in a wide variety of applications”.

I recently made the transition from DDR3 to DDR4, and sadly, I will have to stick with the DDR4 for now because it’s going to take quite a while before the DDR5 is available in the consumer market. This delay is partly caused because of the fact that manufacturers of consumer processors take time to update their equipment for supporting the latest RAM. This was pretty much the case with DDR4 RAM since they were actually released in 2012, but couldn’t make it to the consumer market until late 2015 when Intel and other leading processor manufacturers added support for it to their processors.

In recent times, there have been substantial and rapid developments in the computer industry; and whether it’s ultra-slim and powerful notebooks or highly specialized gaming gadgets, nothing remains new in this industry for too long.

After JEDEC finalizes the specifications for DDR5 in 2018, leading processor and motherboard manufacturers will take measures to update their systems accordingly and the DDR5 will enter the consumer market somewhere around 2019, at the earliest. Initially, it is probably going to appear only in corporate servers and high-end gaming machines; however, soon afterwards it will make the leap to other medium range machines such as laptops, and in time, may be even mobile devices. While in today’s gaming market there exist enormously powerful machines with top-notch equipment, from processor to graphics card; market leaders in game manufacturing constantly push these machines to their limits even with all their robust functionality. Game manufacturing giants such as Ubisoft, EA Sports, Rockstar, and Valve have been known to develop games that can test the limits of your pc. You can even find lists of games that can literally ‘punish your pc’ if it is not capable enough to handle the game. With the arrival of the DDR5, this is bound to change, for at least as far as RAM is concerned. For now, be at peace with whichever RAM you are using, since you won’t be replacing it anytime soon. Happy gaming!