Intel is apparently planning to add support for DDR4 memory to its upcoming high-end platforms from the third quarter of the year onwards. DDR4 support is expected to appear on upcoming Grantley Xeons, based on the Haswell architecture.

However, consumers will have to wait a bit longer. DDR4 support on consumer platforms is expected 12 to 18 months from now, PC World reports. Although the focus in on performance, DDR4 should also deliver superior power efficiency. DDR4 can provide power savings of about 35 percent and a 50 percent boost in bandwidth.

This would make it ideal for mobile devices, but they will be the last to get it. In fact, mobile devices are currently transitioning from LPDDR2 to LPDDR3 and JEDEC is still developing the low-power DDR4 spec. The relatively high price of DDR4 will relegate it to high-end platform for the first few quarters, or even years. Analysts believe DDR4 will be about 30 percent more expensive than DDR3, but the difference should drop to about 10 percent in 2015.