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 back in October 2022, its natural successor to LPDDR5 ran at a nippy 8.5Gbps. This new chip runs at 10.7Gbps, over 11% faster than the 9.6Gbps LPDDR5T variant offered by its archrival, SK Hynix.
Samsung is building its new chips on a 12nm class process, which means the new DRAM isn’t only faster, but much smaller too – the smallest chip size for any LPDDR, in fact – making it ideal for use in on-device AI applications.
Improved power efficiency
“As demand for low-power, high-performance memory increases, LPDDR DRAM is expected to expand its applications from mainly mobile to other areas that traditionally require higher performance and reliability such as PCs, accelerators, servers and automobiles,” 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 upcoming on-device AI era through close collaboration with customers.”
Samsung’s 10.7Gbps LPDDR5X boosts performance by over 25% and increases capacity by upward of 30%, compared to LPDDR5. Samsung says it also elevates the single package capacity of mobile DRAM to 32GB.
LPDDR5X offers several power-saving technologies, which bolster power efficiency by 25% and allow the chip to enter low-power mode for extended periods.
Samsung intends to begin mass production of the 10.7Gbps LPDDR5X DRAM in the second half of this year upon successful verification with mobile application processor (AP) and mobile device providers.
