Joshua Daggerfire
Wanted Pirate
AMD recently released there GPU, the R9 Fury. Unlike previous GPUs that use GDDR5, the Fury uses HBM.
Before I continue, it might be good to look back at the introduction of GDDR5. Before GDDR5 GPUs ATI and NV used DDR3 for their GPUs, and when they transitioned to GDDR5, there was a huge gain in performance. And based off what I know, there is a 1.8 to 2.7 times increase. But GDDR5 could do something DDR3 couldn't. Read and write simutaneously. And when comparing GDDR5 to GDDR3, GDDR3 doesn't even stand a chance, even if one wants to compare a 1 Gb Gddr5 gpu to a 4 Gb Gddr3, the 4 Gb you doesn't stand a chance (mainly because the Gddr3 you can't use all of the memory.)
Now back to HBM. Currently, as stated earlier, the only HBM device we have to compare is the R9 Fury. At only 4GB, it already compares to the 6 Gb 980 Ti and 12 Gb Titan X.
Currently, Nvidia does not have any HBM devices, but their next gen GPUs, the Pascal series will be using HBM, but a more advanced version: HBM2.
Now, what is the difference between HBM and HBM2? Well, the main difference is how they work. HBM is stuck using 4hi stacks of 1Gb modules. HBM will be 4 or 8 hi with 2 or 4 Gb modules. This means GPUs with 32 Gb of Vram!
Before I continue, it might be good to look back at the introduction of GDDR5. Before GDDR5 GPUs ATI and NV used DDR3 for their GPUs, and when they transitioned to GDDR5, there was a huge gain in performance. And based off what I know, there is a 1.8 to 2.7 times increase. But GDDR5 could do something DDR3 couldn't. Read and write simutaneously. And when comparing GDDR5 to GDDR3, GDDR3 doesn't even stand a chance, even if one wants to compare a 1 Gb Gddr5 gpu to a 4 Gb Gddr3, the 4 Gb you doesn't stand a chance (mainly because the Gddr3 you can't use all of the memory.)
Now back to HBM. Currently, as stated earlier, the only HBM device we have to compare is the R9 Fury. At only 4GB, it already compares to the 6 Gb 980 Ti and 12 Gb Titan X.
Currently, Nvidia does not have any HBM devices, but their next gen GPUs, the Pascal series will be using HBM, but a more advanced version: HBM2.
Now, what is the difference between HBM and HBM2? Well, the main difference is how they work. HBM is stuck using 4hi stacks of 1Gb modules. HBM will be 4 or 8 hi with 2 or 4 Gb modules. This means GPUs with 32 Gb of Vram!