2018-01-11 – Samsung Electronics today announced that it has started mass production of the Samsung Aquabolt – its 2nd-generation 8 GB High Bandwidth Memory-2 (HBM2) with the fastest data transmission speed on the market today. This is the industry’s first HBM2 to deliver a 2.4 Gbps data transfer speed per pin.
Samsung Aquabolt – World’s Fastest HBM2 Memory
Samsung’s new 8GB HBM2 delivers the highest level of DRAM performance, featuring a 2.4Gbps pin speed at 1.2V, which translates into a performance upgrade of nearly 50% per each package, compared to the 1st-generation 8GB HBM2 package with its 1.6Gbps pin speed at 1.2V and 2.0Gbps at 1.35V.
With these improvements, a single Samsung 8GB HBM2 package will offer a 307 GB/s data bandwidth – 9.6X faster than an 8 Gb GDDR5 chip, which provides a 32 GB/s data bandwidth. Using four of the new HBM2 packages in a system will enable a 1.2 TB/s bandwidth. This improves overall system performance by as much as 50%, compared to a system that uses the first-generation 1.6 Gbps HBM2 memory.
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How Samsung Created Aquabolt
To achieve Aquabolt’s unprecedented performance, Samsung has applied new technologies related to TSV design and thermal control.
A single 8GB HBM2 package consists of eight 8Gb HBM2 dies, which are vertically interconnected using over 5,000 TSVs (Through Silicon Via’s) per die. While using so many TSVs can cause collateral clock skew, Samsung succeeded in minimizing the skew to a very modest level and significantly enhancing chip performance in the process.
In addition, Samsung increased the number of thermal bumps between the HBM2 dies, which enables stronger thermal control in each package. Also, the new HBM2 includes an additional protective layer at the bottom, which increases the package’s overall physical strength.
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