In electronic engineering, DDR3 SDRAM or double-data-rate three synchronous dynamic random access memory is a random access memory technology used for high speed storage of the working data of a computer or other digital electronic device.
DDR3 is part of the SDRAM family of technologies and is one of the many DRAM (dynamic random access memory) implementations. DDR3 SDRAM is an improvement over its predecessor, DDR2 SDRAM.
The primary benefit of DDR3 is the ability to run its I/O bus at four times the speed of the memory cells it contains, thus enabling faster bus speeds and higher peak throughput than earlier memory technologies. However, greater bus speed and throughput is achieved at the cost of higher latency. In addition, the DDR3 standard allows for chip capacities of 512 megabits to 8 gigabits, effectively enabling a maximum memory module size of 16 gigabytes.
DDR3 SDRAM is available to purchase now, although no current Apple products will be compatible with it. As the Mac Pro uses FB-DIMMs, it is unlikely this technology will be used in the Mac Pro soon. The rest of the Apple lineup uses Intel's Centrino platform. In June 2008, Intel will launch the Montevina platform which is compatible with both DDR2 SDRAM and DDR3 SDRAM. When Apple integrates Montevina into their lineup, they may upgrade some models to DDR3 SDRAM, however, currently DDR3 SDRAM is much more expensive than the equivalent amount of DDR2 SDRAM, so there could be a longer wait before the new RAM becomes mainstream