DDR4 Will Finally Arrive If Not In Broadwell, Then In Haswell-E News

Those who can remember the tumultuous PC Memory Wars of ’01 that raged between RDRAM and DDR should also wistfully recall how DDR’s victory saw it on the quick upgrade march. After DDR’s introduction in 2001, DDR2 came in 2004 and DDR3 in 2007. Since then, however, the appetite to upgrade main system RAM hasn’t been there. When DDR4 finally comes out next year, we’ll have been sitting with DDR3 for seven years. DDR4 is expected to have support when Intel introduces its mobile-focused Broadwell CPUs next year. We say “expected” because there are leaks that indicate Intel may actually decide to back DDR3 with Broadwell instead. Even if Broadwell doesn’t support DDR4, we expect the new RAM to appear with the Haswell-E that’s slated for the end of next year. And yes, we have faith we’ll see the new CPU by then. We’ve actually seen prototypes of the server and desktop versions of Haswell-E, so we know the damned thing exists. What’s more, Kingston showed off a server running 192GB of DDR4/2133. The company didn’t say what CPU was in the box, but it wasn’t hard to deduce it was Haswell-E. DDR4 promises higher speeds, lower voltage, and greater densities over DDR3. The memory itself has been capable of being produced for more than two years, but its adoption has been stalled given the price premium and incompatibility. Since the memory controllers are directly embedded into the CPUs, Intel and AMD would have to spin new silicon to support the RAM. Both would likely have to support both DDR4 and DDR3 versions because the vast majority of computers will continue to run DDR3 due to cost.