Following the announcement of mass production Snapdragon processor 820 and Exynos 8890, Samsung announced that it has started mass production of 20-nanometer 4-gigabyte memory HBM2. This is the second generation of the standard, which replaces the current GDDR5, used in particular in the cards. Compared with GDDR5, HBM2 occupies 95% less space and has a seven-fold higher throughput of 256 Gbit / s vs 36 Gb / s (compared 4GB modules). This was made possible thanks to the three-dimensional structure (four 8 Gbps plates) and five thousand TSV-connectors. During the year, Samsung expects to begin producing and 8GB modules HBM2.

Recall that the first graphics cards to the first generation AMD company HBM announced in June 2015. It is expected that this year, together with Nvidia, it will move to the 14- and 16-nanometer process technology, putting an end to the 5-year dominance of the 28-nanometer GPU. So the industry of desktop video cards this year promises to be a landmark three times: the new process technology, the new standard memory and a new, low-level, API (DirectX 12, Vulkan, Mantle and Metal). The spread of these new technologies allows us to hope that in 2016 the development of computer graphics (including games) will get a new impetus.