DDR5 may see even slower adoption than initially anticipated, reaching a market share of just 1.1% by the end of the year. Limited processor support and component shortages (most notably PMC) have driven DDR5 memory prices through the roof. It’s worth noting that Intel’s Alder Lake processors come with DDR4 as well as DDR5 memory support, and existing data indicates that the performance gains from the latter are very limited.
According to the statistics provided by Omdia Research, DDR5 memory will continue to occupy a niche market till 2023, when it’ll overtake existing DDR4 solutions with a market share of nearly 30% (vs 24.8% for DDR4). The market share for the next-gen memory standard is expected to grow from 1% in 2021 to 10.7% in 2022. Finally, DDR4 will start becoming obsolete by 2024 when DDR5 will power nearly half of all computers shipped that year.
Intel’s 12th and 13th Gen Core processors will support both DDR4 and DDR5 while AMD’s next-gen Ryzen 7000 “Zen 4” lineup will exclusively support the latter. SK Hynix and Samsung have both started sampling DDR5 memory chips with speeds of up to 6400 MT/s. Samsung plans to use EUV lithography with Hynix working on 24Gb or 3GB memory chips.
