Renesas unveils data buffer

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Renesas has announced a high-speed, low-power DDR5 data buffer for data centre, server, and high-performance workstation application.

Due to advancements in real-time analytics, machine learning, HPC, AI, and other memory and bandwidth-hungry applications there has been explosive growth in server memory bandwidth requirements.

The JEDEC-compliant DDR5 data buffer 5DB0148 has been developed to enable significantly higher speeds and lower latency for load-reduced dual inline memory modules (LRDIMMs) that have become the cornerstone memory technology for this new class of applications. The first generation of DDR5 LRDIMMs based on Renesas components enable a bandwidth increase of more than 35 percent over DDR4 LRDIMMs operating at 3200 MT/s.

“As the industry’s complete DDR5 solution provider, we are working closely with customers and ecosystem partners to launch a vastly expanded portfolio of memory solutions into production,” said Rami Sethi, Vice President, Data Center Business Division at Renesas. “Our DDR5 data buffers are critical to enabling high performance DRAM solutions such as LRDIMMs, alternative high density modules and heterogeneous memory solutions, all of which empower a new generation of high performance computing applications.”

The Renesas DDR5 Data Buffer maximises channel eye opening for systems that are heavily loaded through a combination of capacitive load reduction, data alignment, and signal recovery techniques, allowing server motherboards with a large number of memory channels and slots and complex routing topologies to run at maximum speed, even when fully populated with high-density memory.

In addition, improvements in the DDR5 modules definition allow for lower power supply voltages (1.1V vs 1.2V in DDR4), on-DIMM voltage regulation, and implementation of advanced control plane architectures with the use of the SPD Hub and modern control bus communications such as I3C.

The Renesas DDR5 data buffer 5DB0148 is optimised to work with the other DDR5 Renesas components on an LRDIMM memory module, including the power management IC P8900, the registered clock driver 5RCD0148, the SPD Hub SPD5118, and the temperature sensor TS5111.