The dawn of 5G is almost here, and while the 2019 iPhones aren’t likely to support the faster wireless data speed standard, it’s still probable that Apple will adopt 5G soon after that. Android will be the first to 5G, just like it was for 4G a few years ago, and Samsung phones will probably be among the first devices to support ultra-fast wireless networks.
With the advent of 5G, however, faster data transfer will need next-gen smartphone parts to handle the faster speeds, including RAM and flash memory. And it just so happens that there’s a new RAM standard ready to handle all the 5G needs.
Samsung on Tuesday announced the newly-developed 8GB LPDDR5 chip that happens to be the latest addition to Samsung’s premium 10nm DRAM lineup.
The chip is supposed to power low-power mobile memory solutions, and should help with 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML).
Samsung’s 8Gb LPDDR5 RAM has a transfer rate of up to 6,400 megabits per second (Mb/s) or 1.5 times faster than the LPDDR4X RAM found in current high-end devices. Before you ask, the iPhone X does pack LPDDR4X RAM, just like the Galaxy S9.
How fast is 6,400 Mb/s? It can transfer 51.2GB of data, or 14 Full HD video files in a second, that’s how fast it is.
Furthermore, the new chip has additional features that will help it increase battery life on mobile devices:
To maximize power savings, the 10nm-class LPDDR5 has been engineered to lower its voltage in accordance with the operating speed of the corresponding application processor, when in active mode. It also has been configured to avoid overwriting cells with ‘0’ values. In addition, the new LPDDR5 chip will offer a ‘deep sleep mode,’ which cuts the power usage to approximately half the ‘idle mode’ of the current LPDDR4X DRAM. Thanks to these low-power features, the 8Gb LPDDR5 DRAM will deliver power consumption reductions of up to 30 percent, maximizing mobile device performance and extending the battery life of smartphones.
The Samsung press release doesn’t tell us what devices will get the new standard, but the company says it has completed functional testing and validation, together with global chip vendors, of a prototype 8GB LPDDR5 DRAM package made of eight 8Gb LPDDR5 chips.
The iPhone X’s RAM comes from Samsung rival SK Hynix, while the Galaxy S9 has Samsung memory inside. But Samsung already appears ready to offer RAM solutions for 5G devices, and its LPDDR5 package is likely to power various Galaxy S, X, and Note flagships, and maybe even the iPhone X 5G of the near future. In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising to see LPDDR5 RAM inside Samsung’s 2018 flagships, including the Galaxy S10, Galaxy X, and Galaxy Note 10. At least one of them, if not all of them, should also be ready for 5G.
