Low Power DDR memory is an incredibly important component of all mobile devices, reducing power consumption while often offering laptop competing speeds. Samsung recently announced the first LPDDR5 DRAM chip targeting major upgrades over the previous generation LPDDR4X. Here’s some speculation about the specifications:
LPDDR4 has been around since 2014 and the announcement last year of LPDDR4X was not a huge advancement by any means. This makes what Samsung has announced with LPDDR5 intriguing. Performance wise, Samsung has stated LPDDR5 targets up to 6.4Gbps/pin, a 50% increase in bandwidth over the standard LPDDR4X. In terms of power consumption, LPDDR4X did actually reduce the Vddq I/O voltage from 1.1v to 0.6v, but Samsung has supposedly lowered voltages further, though they have not announced any new numbers.
Samsung has also announced a new deep sleep mode touting power consumption as low as half LPDDR4X’s idle mode. AnandTech comments:
LPDDR5’s DSM is a longer sleep mode than what’s currently used in LPDDR4(X), allowing the DRAM to idle at even lower levels of power consumption. The tradeoff I expect being that it takes longer to enter and exit this sleep mode, based on how deep sleep modes make similar tradeoffs in other devices.
Production on LPDDR5 has not yet started, as notably the JEDEC has not finalized the specifications for it, but it won’t be too long before it’s hitting the mobile market. JEDEC’s specifications are expected out later this year and Samsung is clearly very eager to begin production.
Read more at: Samsung Announces First LPDDR5 DRAM Chip, Targets 6.4Gbps Data Rates & 30% Reduced Power
