Samsung launched the world’s first LPDDR5X DRAM solution in November last year. It is a 14nm 16Gb chip that brings faster speeds and lesser power consumption over the previous-gen solutions. In March this year, the company revealed that the new DRAM chip has been validated for use in Qualcomm’s next-gen mobile processors. The Korean firm also touted data transfer speeds of up to 7.5Gbps. It has topped that speed by 1Gbps in just about seven months. A peak speed of 8.5Gbps is about 1.33 times faster speed than the 6.4Gbps speeds offered by LPDDR5 DRAM chips found in the current crop of high-end smartphones. Samsung says it achieved this speed by optimizing a “high-speed signal environment between the application processor and memory”. The latest solution has already been validated by Qualcomm. The American chipmaker’s upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 may pair it inside next-gen flagship Android smartphones. Qualcomm is expected to launch the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 next month. It has already confirmed the dates for its next Snapdragon Summit. The event will take place in Hawaii between November 15 and November 17. Samsung’s Galaxy S23 series will be one of the first devices to feature the new Qualcomm chipset. The phones will arrive in January or February next year.
Samsung sees a wider application of its LPDDR5X DRAM chips
We may see Samsung’s LPDDR5X DRAM solution inside smartphones as early as this year, or the latest by 2023. But the Korean firm sees its applications in other areas as well. It expects LPDDR DRAM to extend its presence as the need for faster, smaller, and more power-efficient memory increases across various fields. Its low-power and high-performance characteristics make LPDDR DRAM an ideal solution for PCs, high-performance computing (HPC), data centers, servers, and automobiles, as well as artificial intelligence (AI) and the metaverse. “As LPDDR memory continues to broaden its usage beyond smartphones into AI and data center applications, strong collaboration between memory and SoC vendors is becoming all the more important,” said Daniel Lee, Executive Vice President of the Memory Product Planning Team at Samsung. “Samsung will continue to actively engage with innovators like Qualcomm Technologies to enhance ecosystem readiness for future LPDDR standards.
