Memory and storage makers Micron announced it is ramping up production of DDR4 memory to support the upcoming Xeon E5-2600 v3 "Haswell-EP" chips coming from Intel.

Better power and performance of DDR4 technology is a critical requirement for the growing enterprise computing market. DDR4 delivers a power improvement of up to 35 percent compared to standard DDR3.

Haswell-EP is the server version of the enthusiast product expected out later this year, which is codenamed Haswell-E.

Micron is ramping its 4Gb-based DDR4 module production at 2133 megatransfers per second (MT/s) in support of Haswell-EP chips. More importantly, Micron is now also sampling faster 2400 MT/s RAM modules in anticipation of follow-on products targeted for 2015. So far manufacturers have been sticking to 2133 MT/s modules.

"Our JEDEC-compliant portfolio showcases the performance and power benefits that DDR4 products can provide for our customers," said Robert Feurle, Micron’s vice president of marketing and program management. "As a result of Micron’s close engagement with our key enabling partners, we are well positioned to bring this exciting new technology to market."

"We have been working with Micron since the early days of DDR4 memory definition and through DDR4 product launch," said Geof Findley, Intel DCG Memory Ecosystem Director. "We are very excited that our mutual customers will be able to reap the benefits of this new memory technology to improve performance and reduce power as part of future Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v3 product family based systems with production availability of these new processors in 2H’14."

Micron’s fully JEDEC-compliant DDR4 portfolio includes RDIMMs, LRDIMMs, VLP RDIMMs, UDIMMs and SODIMMs (ECC and non-ECC), as well as x4, x8 and x16 components. NVDIMM customer samples are expected in the early 3Q14 timeframe.

This memory upgrade is going to be big for the RAM industry, and both Micron and its competitor Samsung – which has also announced DDR4 offerings – are well placed to benefit. While Samsung is the largest RAM manufacturer, Micron is holds on to second place, and between them they control more than 65 percent of the market.

One company that has yet to announce plans for DDR4 is AMD, which means that those wanting to take advantage of the faster RAM will need to adopt the Intel platform. This could further erode AMD's position in the processor market.