Samsung Electronics has officially begun mass producing the industry’s first 12GB LPDDR5 memory, designed for the premium and high-end smartphone market. Aside from featuring a completely different memory standard, the new memory chip will also be optimised for 5G connectivity and AI features on smartphones.
The announcement comes less than half a year after Samsung began mass production of its 12GB LPDDR4X memory.
“With mass production of the 12Gb LPDDR5 built on Samsung’s latest second-generation 10-nanometer (nm) class process, we are thrilled to be supporting the timely launch of 5G flagship smartphones for our customers worldwide,” Jung-bae Lee, executive vice president of DRAM Product & Technology, Samsung Electronics, said.
In terms of performance figures. the new LPDDR5 standard has a data rate of 5500MB/s. Statistically, that makes its 1.3x faster that the current LPDDR4X, which is rated at 4266MB/s. To put it in another way, transferring a 44GB-size file with LPDDR5 RAM would take a literal second to complete. Further, the new chip also uses 30% less power than its predecessor, thanks to a bunch of new circuits and power-saving features.
For now, Samsung has not announced when the new 12GB LPDDR5 memory module will be available on smart devices. Given the Korean giant’s habit and pattern, however, we could see it deployed with next year’s round of flagship Galaxy smartphones. On a side note, Samsung is also expected to develop a higher capacity 16GB LPDDR5 memory module next year.
(Source: Samsung)
