Memory subsystems are an important part of graphics workloads, and both AMD and NVIDIA have always been looking to cross the cutting-edge of tech in both GPU production and memory fabrication technologies. AMD has been hitching itself to the HBM bandwagon with much more fervor than NVIDIA, albeit with somewhat lukewarm results - at least from a consumer, gaming GPU perspective. NVIDIA has been more cautious: lock HBM's higher costs and lower availability to higher-margin products that can leverage the additional bandwidth, and leave GDDR to muscle its way through consumer products - a strategy that has likely helped in keeping BOM costs for its graphics cards relatively low.

As it stands, Micron was the only company with both the roadmap and production volume to be NVIDIA's partner in launching the RTX 20-series, with products above (and including) the GTX 2070 all carrying the new high-performance memory subsystem. Micron has already announced GDDR6 memory as a product back in 2017, with sampling by the beginning of 2018 and mass volume production by June - just enough time to spool up a nice inventory for new, shiny graphics cards to come out in September. Of course, this ramp-up and initial Micron leadership doesn't mean they will be the only suppliers for NVIDIA - however, it's safe to say they'll be the most relevant one for at least a good while.