Not to be confused with Intel's new 12th generation CPUs and new DDR5 RAM for desktops, Samsung today announced the "industry's first" LPDDR5X DRAM for smartphones and mobile devices.
According to Samsung Electronics, LPDDR5X DRAM has a maximum data processing speed of 8.5 Gbps, 1.3 times faster than standard LPDDR5 RAM (6.4 Gbps), and a 20 percent reduction in power consumption.
The LPDDR5X is based on a new 14-nanometer process, and Samsung says it is the first manufacturer to offer a 16GB LPDDR5X chip that can even offer up to 64GB of RAM in a single device.
In addition to an 8.5Gbps data rate increase, another major upgrade to the LPDDR5X is that it is designed to support 16 memory groups per channel, rather than the standard LPDDR5, which can vary between 8 and 16 memory groups depending on the configuration.
In addition to high-end phones for the future, Samsung said its new LPDDR5X DRAM is also designed to support a wide range of high-speed applications in 5G, artificial intelligence, automotive, and the metaverse like every other company today.
"LPDDR5X will expand the use of high-performance, low-power memory beyond smartphones and bring new functions to edge applications based on ARTIFICIAL intelligence such as servers and cars," said Hwang Sang-Joon, executive vice president and head of DRAM design at Samsung Electronics.
The company added that it would begin working with chipmakers to "build a more viable framework for an expanding digital reality" — a reality that would be "underwritten" by such super-powerful DRAM.
Samsung didn't provide a specific timeline for when we might see LPDDR5X DRAM in actual consumer devices, and although based on Samsung's plans to use its new memory to support new virtual reality and ar based applications, I wouldn't be surprised to see LPDDRX5 either SDRAM will appear on the device (probably an AR/VR based headset) sometime next year.
