Samsung Announces LPDDR5X-8500 Memory | Tom’s Hardware
Samsung announced on Tuesday that it has validated LPDDR5X memory at an operating speed of 8.5 Gbps. Samsung hopes the new DRAM will be used for bandwidth-hungry applications beyond smartphones and tablets, including PCs, high-performance computing applications, servers and vehicles.
For now, Samsung has validated the LPDDR5X-8500 memory on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon mobile platform, but has not specified which platform. Both Samsung and Qualcomm are interested in validating his top-of-the-line Snapdragon system-on-chip for smartphones and always-connected laptops, with the fastest memory chips available today. Faster LPDDR5X will give these platforms more bandwidth and performance, making them more competitive with rivals, but the two companies haven’t revealed all the details yet.
Originally developed primarily with smartphones in mind, LPDDR memory is now widely used in desktops and notebooks from Apple and laptops with system-on-chips from AMD, Intel and Qualcomm. Apple tends to use his LPDDR4X/LPDDR5 memory with a wide range of interfaces to maximize memory bandwidth without the need for expensive high-bandwidth memory (HBM). However, wide interfaces are expensive because they take up a lot of valuable die space on the chip. As a result, there are many companies using high-speed LPDDR5/LPDDR5X memory with a “standard” 128-bit interface to maximize memory bandwidth compared to DDR4. and DDR5 type memory.
LPDDR5X was originally developed with bandwidth-intensive applications such as AI/ML and graphics processing in mind. There are smartphones that use Samsung’s LPDDR5X-8500, but we can expect these memory ICs to be used in devices other than mobile phones as well. For example, always-on PCs powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon SoC can take advantage of such memory.
Intel has not yet validated processors with LPDDR5X memory in general. Officially, Intel’s latest 12th Generation Core ‘Alder Lake’ CPUs for notebooks support his LPDDR5-5200 memory instead of LPDDR5X DRAM, and of course support data transfer speeds of 8500 Gbps. not. Perhaps Intel’s 13th Generation Core ‘Raptor Lake’ SoCs for laptops will support both LPDDR5X and blazing fast data transfer rates, but we’ll have to wait and see.
“The joint validation of the 8.5 Gbps LPDDR5X DRAM has allowed us to accelerate the availability of this high-speed memory interface across the market for more than a year. It’s an achievement,” said Daniel Lee, executive vice president of Samsung Electronics’ memory product planning team. “As LPDDR memory continues to expand its use beyond smartphones into AI and data center applications, strong collaboration between memory and SoC vendors is becoming increasingly important. We will actively engage with leading innovators to strengthen the readiness of the ecosystem for future LPDDR standards.”