MRDIMM: Why your next server will have a new kind of memory

Already, memory maker Renesas Electronics has announced it is working on its second-generation MRDIMM with 12,800 GT/s, which is double what the best standard DDR5 memory can do. The next-gen memory is expected to ship in the first half of 2025.

Singhal believes that AMD and other server hardware vendors will adopt MRDIMM over time. The chief memory makers – Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron – are on board and supporting MRDIMM and plan to release products, as is Rambus, which designs and licenses memory products to the industry.

“We worked closely with the memory vendors to develop this, to validate it, and make sure that everything could work here. So, we’re the first ones to do this, but we’re also working with the memory suppliers to take this through the standards bodies like JEDEC for memory. So, this will be a standard memory technology that anybody can use,” Singhal said.

Intel says classical HPC applications, which include weather simulations and computational fluid dynamics simulations, typically have the biggest demand for memory bandwidth. Depending on the workload, Intel has been seeing between a 10% and 20% increase in performance with MRDIMM for things like database applications and up to 40% improvements in AI applications.

In the big picture, hyperscale data center operators will be most likely to adopt MRDIMM for their servers first.

Jim Handy, president of semiconductor market research firm Objective Analysis, believes MRDIMM will succeed where Optane failed. “Optane was driven by Intel. This is being driven by the data centers. You know, it’s always a good idea to let the customers call the shots,” he said.