Samsung has begun shipping GDDR 4 memory chips in volume, the company said today, more than eight months after it began sampling the parts.

The South Korean giant's offering is a 512Mb part fabbed at 80nm. The chips can chuck data around at a rate of 2.4Gbps per pin, and with 32 pins per chip that's 9.6GBps in total. The DDR 2-based chip is clocked at 1.2GHz (2.4GHz effective).

That's some way below the 12.8GBps, 3.2GHz part Samsung showed off in February this year. And, for that matter, the 11.6GBps, 2.9GHz chip Hynix demonstrated in December 2005. However, it shows where the technology can go. Indeed, Hynix said it plans to ship a 14.4GBps, 3.6GHz GDDR 4 chip in the second half of 2006. ®