Five years after LPDDR5 was first introduced, and a matter of months before JEDEC finalizes the LPDDR6 standard, Samsung has announced a new, faster version of its LPDDR5X DRAM.
When the South Korean tech giant debuted LPDDR5X in October 2022, its natural successor to LPDDR5 ran at a speedy 8.5 Gbps. This new chip runs at 10.7 Gbps, more than 11% faster than the 9.6 Gbps LPDDR5T variant of its arch-rival SK Hynix.
Samsung is building its new chips based on a 12nm class process, meaning the new DRAM is not only faster, but also much smaller (in fact, the smallest chip size for any LPDDR), making it ideal for use in AI applications on the device .
Improved energy efficiency
“As the demand for low-power, high-performance memory increases, LPDDR DRAM is expected to expand its applications from primarily mobile devices to other areas that traditionally require higher performance and reliability, such as PCs, accelerators, servers and automotive,” said YongCheol Bae, Executive Vice President of Memory Product Planning of the Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung will continue to innovate and deliver optimized products for the coming AI era on devices, through close collaboration with customers.”
Samsung’s 10.7 Gbps LPDDR5X improves performance by over 25% and increases capacity by over 30%, compared to LPDDR5. Samsung says it is also increasing the capacity of mobile DRAM in a single package to 32 GB.
LPDDR5X offers several power-saving technologies, which increase energy efficiency by 25% and allow the chip to enter power-saving mode for extended periods.
Samsung plans to begin mass production of the 10.7 Gbps LPDDR5X DRAM in the second half of this year, following successful verification with mobile application processors (AP) and mobile device vendors.