Samsung Reaffirms DRAM Leadership by Starting Mass Production (opens in new tab) 16 Gigabit (Gb) DDR5 DRAM at 12nm. The South Korean electronics giant claims that memory ICs born from this new process will consume about a quarter of the power and improve wafer productivity by as much as a fifth compared to the previous generation. . Additionally, these cutting-edge memory chips boast pin speeds of up to 7.2 Gbps.
Jooyoung Lee, Executive Vice President of DRAM Products & Technologies at Samsung Electronics, said of the manufacturing milestone, “By using differentiated process technology, Samsung’s industry-leading 12nm-class DDR5 DRAM It delivers outstanding performance and power efficiency.” However, PC users will have to wait for a trickle down as the first use of these his 12nm DDR5 ICs will be in applications such as data centers, artificial intelligence and next generation computing.
Samsung says the development of 12nm-class DRAM was made possible by “the use of new high-K materials.” To elaborate further, the transistor gate materials used in these ICs have high capacitance, making it easy to accurately distinguish between their states. Additionally, Samsung’s efforts to reduce operating voltage and noise have also contributed to this optimized solution.
Since these are still 16 Gb ICs, Samsung has not advanced further along its density roadmap for these DRAM chips. Rather, the heralded benefits are in power efficiency, speed, and wafer economics. If you want some numbers, Samsung specifies that his 12nm DDR5 ICs will cut power consumption by 23% and improve wafer productivity by up to 20% compared to the previous generation.
Does this mean faster DDR5 modules?
We already mentioned that the new DRAM ICs offer a pin speed of 7.2 Gbps. In theory, this means that his DRAM-to-RAM transfer of two of his 30GB UHD movies could be completed in about a second, according to Samsung.But if this same Pin speeds advertised in previous generation 14nm DRAM ICs (opens in new tab). This does not rule out the possibility of better overclocking capabilities for the new DDR5 DRAM. We’ll have to wait and see for this information.
Samsung says it has already confirmed that its new (12nm) 16Gb DDR5 ICs have passed compatibility tests for use in AMD systems. It also works closely with other unknown companies.
