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Samsung Announces Production of 20nm Mobile LPDDR4, Faster Than Desktop DDR4

Posted by timothy on from the leapfrog-is-fun dept.

MojoKid writes Samsung announced today that it has begun volume production of its 8Gb LPDDR4 memory chips, with expected commercial shipments in 2015. The announcement is noteworthy for a number of reasons. First, one of the most important characteristics of a modern mobile device is its battery life, and moving to a new memory standard should significantly reduce the memory subsystem's power consumption. Second, however, there's the clock speed. Samsung is claiming that its LPDDR4 will hit 3.2GHz, and while bus widths on mobile parts are significantly smaller than the 64-bit channels that desktops use, the higher clock speed per chip will help close that gap. In fact, multiple vendors have predicted that LPDDR4 clock speeds will actually outpace standard DDR4, with a higher amount of total bandwidth potentially delivered to tablets and smartphones than conventional PCs will see. In addition, the power savings are expected to be substantial.

4 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. mobile vs desktop bus width by danbob999 · · Score: 4, Informative

    and while bus widths on mobile parts are significantly smaller than the 64-bit channels that desktops use

    Many chips such as Snapdragon 805 and Apple A8x use dual-channel 64-bit LPDDR3 with about 25GB/s total memory bandwidth.

  2. What's with the clock rate masturbation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm not sure why they're speculating on the whole "faster than desktop!". What's the agenda here? Higher clocks isn't actually a desired feature, it's what you have to do if the bus is too narrow and you're too cheap do make it wider. If they could afford it, they'd definitely pick a wider bus before higher clocks (and therefore more energy consumption).

    Also, desktop DDR4 has been run at 4GHz already.

    In short; good luck with that.

    1. Re:What's with the clock rate masturbation? by afidel · · Score: 3, Informative

      Also, desktop DDR4 has been run at 4GHz already.
      Perhaps by enthusiast overclockers, but the current DDR4 standard only goes to 2400MT/s with provisions for up to 3200 in a future revision of the spec.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  3. Re:PC with SODIMMs? by erice · · Score: 3, Informative

    There are no DIMMs for LPDDR, SO or otherwise. The price for low IO power is no termination resistors. The means you only get adequate signal integrity with short, point to point traces. Edge connector buses need not apply.

    SODIMMs use the same DDR protocol as desktop DIMMs, but usually contain fewer chips and wider buses to each chip.