High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) As Fast As Possible
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2016-05-06
·
935 words · ~4 min read
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whenever there's a big new graphics card release there's always like a feeding
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frenzy as Gamers try to get their hands on it so that they can blow away dudes
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in crisper detail and at higher resolutions than ever before but while
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the performance of the graphics processor or GPU itself is often the
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most talked about aspect of a new card the amount of video memory or vram on a
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card can have a big effect on just how high you can crank up your settings
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but while gpus or Graphics processors have been updated and re-updated pretty
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regularly over the last few years not much has happened with vram recently
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we've had the same old gddr5 memory
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hanging out on our cards for over seven years but the next big thing in vram is
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finally here I'm talking of course about high bandwidth memory or hbm so what
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exactly is it how is it better than older vram technology and most
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importantly is it actually going to make a difference in your games well just
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like any other type of vram hbm performs functions like keeping rendered frames
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in storage in a frame buffer no not that kind holding textures to make everything
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on screen look realistic and storing crucial information for lighting and
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other effects in short it holds the information that your GPU needs to act
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upon to push an image to your monitor but although hbm serves the same base
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basic function as other types of vram the way that it's actually implemented
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on your graphics card is very different for starters gddr5 and its predecessors
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require dram chips attached to the PCB
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spread out around the processor and the more memory you want and the higher
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speeds you want the more chips you need to plunk on there which combined with
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the traces for data and power to all those chips take up a lot of space on
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the car hard and increased manufacturing complexity and therefore cost hbm solves
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these problems two ways number one the vram is now directly attached to the GPU
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package meaning that hbm requires no more space than what's already normally
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taken up by the GPU two hbm uses 3D RAM
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dieses that are stacked on top of each other and that communicate using tiny
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interconnects called through silicon vas or tsvs which are called that since they
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physically go through all the Stacked layers at once kind of like a toothpick
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through a giant club sandwich and while you can't eat hbm like you would a Monte
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Christo these changes have the potential to give you some positively delicious
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results while gaming so the chips themselves have a much wider data
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interface that combined with stacking the chips gives you these little well
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Stacks that can move up to 256 gabt of
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data per second which means that a graphics card with just four stacks of
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hbm could have memory throughput of a full terabyte of data per second which
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will become increasingly important in the future as more and more non-gaming
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applications like Adobe Premiere for example start leveraging the graphics
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card for compute and as the resolutions that typical Gamers want to run at
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increase not to mention that there's things like multi 4k monitor setups that
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are becoming cheaper and more popular
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all of which will be easier with more memory bandwidth okay then lonus so how
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do I hop on board this hype train well
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hbn is only currently available on AMD's topend Radeon R9 Fury series but the
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rumor mill figures that NVIDIA's upcoming Pascal graphics cards will
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feature the technology and as we all know the high-end today is the
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mainstream of tomorrow so within a couple years we should all be able to
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have enough memory bandwidth to choke a horse speaking of choking horses or nope
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and Australia all right so thanks for watching guys if you like the video do
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that thing if you disliked it do the other thing don't forget to check out our other channels we've got a great
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video up on Channel Super Fun it's like a A Pimp My Ride type thing with my car
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which as you guys all know should be hilarious um as always leave comments
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good stuff and I'll see you guys next time