Samsung Announces Industry’s First 10nm Class 8Gb LPDDR5 DRAM

Samsung is announcing that they have succeeded in developing the industry’s first 10-nanometer (nm) class 8-gigabit (Gb) LPDDR5 DRAM.  This newly-developed 8Gb LPDDR5 is the next addition to Samsung’s premium DRAM product lineup, which includes previously-announced 10nm-class 16Gb GDDR6 DRAM that has been in volume production since December of 2017, and 16Gb DDR5 DRAM that was developed in February of this year.  Samsung continues to prepare for the transition to the LPDDR5 standard, anticipated for use in upcoming Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered mobile and 5G applications.

The 8Gb LPDDR5 delivers a data rate of up to 6400Mb/s, which is 1.5 X faster than mobile DRAM chips currently used in flagship mobile devices (LPDDR4X @ 4266Mb/s).  This increased transfer rate can move 51.2GB of data, or the equivalent of 14 full-HD movies, in one second.  The 10nm-class LPDDR5 DRAM is being offered in two bandwidth variants – the 6400Mb/s at 1.1V operating voltage, and 5500Mb/s at 1.05V operating voltage.  This is achieved by doubling the number of memory “banks” – subdivisions within a DRAM cell – from 8 to 16.  This allows for much higher speeds, and at reduced power consumption.

According to Jinman Han, vice president of Memory Product Planning & Application Engineering for Samsung Electronics, “This development of 8Gb LPDDR5 represents a major step forward for low-power mobile memory solutions.  We will continue to expand our next-generation 10nm-class DRAM lineup as we accelerate the move toward greater use of premium memory across the global landscape.”

Samsung has engineered the 10nm-class LPDDR5 to lower its voltage in accordance with the application processor’s operating speed when in active mode.  It has also been engineered to avoid overwriting cells with ‘0’ values.  The new LPDDR5 chip also features a ‘deep sleep mode’, which drops power consumption to approximately half of ‘idle mode’ speeds, resulting in a nearly 30% improvement, helping to extend the battery life of mobile devices.

Samsung, in cooperation with other leading chip vendors, has completed functional testing and validation of a prototype 8GB LPDDR5 DRAM package, consisting of eight x 8Gb LPDDR5 chips.  Samsung anticipates beginning mass production of all three (LPDDR5, DDR5, GDDR6) of their next-generation DRAM series as global market demand dictates.