Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that its latest LPDDR5X DRAM with the industry’s fastest speed of 8.5 gigabits per second (Gbps) was validated for use on Snapdragon^® mobile platforms. By optimizing a high-speed signal environment between application processor and memory, Samsung has surpassed the previous maximum speed of 7.5Gbps achieved in March, reaffirming its leadership in the memory market.

As a global leader in the mobile DRAM market for more than a decade, Samsung has been driving mainstream adoption of high-end smartphones, enabling many more consumers to experience powerful computing performance on their mobile devices.

Thanks to its low-power and high-performance characteristics, LPDDR DRAM is quickly becoming pervasive in modern computing systems, expanding beyond smartphones and into PCs, high-performance computing (HPC), servers and automobiles, where it has enjoyed robust growth in the last few years.

Recently, LPDDR DRAM has seen especially high demand from the PC market, where its ability to combine high performance and low-power consumption in a small form factor is helping PC makers build smaller, lighter and more powerful laptops.

LPDDR memory is also an increasingly important component in modern vehicles. As more and more data is generated through autonomous driving features, high-bandwidth memory like LPDDR DRAM is needed to process massive amounts of vehicle data at much faster speeds.

For data centers and edge servers, LPDDR DRAM’s low-power characteristics can help reduce power consumption levels, resulting in an improved total cost of ownership (TCO) for data center managers, while cutting down on heat and carbon emissions to ultimately lower their impact on climate change.

As the need for faster, smaller and more power-efficient memory increases across various fields, LPDDR DRAM is expected to also extend its presence in emerging markets driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and the metaverse.

“The joint validation of 8.5Gbps LPDDR5X DRAM has enabled us to accelerate market-wide availability of this high-speed memory interface by more than a year, which is a tremendous accomplishment made possible through our long-standing collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies,” said Daniel Lee, Executive Vice President of the Memory Product Planning Team at Samsung Electronics. “As LPDDR memory continues to broaden its usage beyond smartphones into AI and data center applications, strong collaboration between memory and SoC vendors is becoming all the more important. Samsung will continue to actively engage with innovators like Qualcomm Technologies to enhance ecosystem readiness for future LPDDR standards.”

“At Qualcomm Technologies, we strive to be at the forefront of enabling and adopting the latest memory specifications on our Snapdragon mobile platforms. We’re the first in the mobile industry to enable the latest LPDDR5X at 8.5Gbps on Snapdragon mobile platforms, which will enhance user experiences with new features and improved performance for mobile, gaming, camera and AI applications,” said Ziad Asghar, Vice President of Product Management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. has validated Samsung’s 14-nanometer (nm) based 16-gigabit (Gb) Low Power Double Data Rate 5X (LPDDR5X) DRAM for use on Qualcomm Technologies’ Snapdragon^® mobile platforms.

Since developing the industry’s first 14nm-based LPDDR5X DRAM last November, Samsung has worked closely with Qualcomm Technologies to optimize its 7.5 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) LPDDR5X for use with Snapdragon mobile platforms. Delivering about 1.2 times faster speed than the 6.4Gbps LPDDR5 deployed in today’s premium smartphones, Samsung’s LPDDR5X is expected to boost the performance of ultra-high-resolution video recording as well as AI features such as voice recognition, image recognition and natural language processing in next-generation smartphones. Furthermore, by adopting advanced circuit designs as well as dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS), LPDDR5X power consumption can be reduced by approximately 20%.

“The successful validation of our LPDDR5X solution for Qualcomm Technologies’ Snapdragon mobile platforms is a testament to our leadership in DRAM technology,” said Jinman Han, Corporate Executive Vice President and Head of Memory Global Sales & Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “We expect applications for this high-performance, low-power memory to extend beyond smartphones into the data center, PC and automotive, enabling more devices and systems to run with greater efficiency.”

“Qualcomm Technologies is an industry leader in enabling and adopting the latest LPDDR DRAM specifications. Enablement of LPDDR5X on Snapdragon platforms will enhance user experiences with new features and improved performance for gaming, camera and applications using our latest AI Engine across various Qualcomm Technologies’ product lines,” said Ziad Asghar, Vice President of Product Management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

To better accommodate the increasing demand for premium DRAM solutions, Samsung will continually pursue the development of low-power DRAM products that deliver greater performance and even higher capacities in support of a growing array of next-generation systems.

“In recent years, hyperconnected market segments such as AI, augmented reality (AR) and the metaverse, which rely on extremely fast large-scale data processing, have been rapidly expanding,” said SangJoon Hwang, Senior Vice President and Head of the DRAM Design Team at Samsung Electronics. “Our LPDDR5X will broaden the use of high-performance, low-power memory beyond smartphones and bring new capabilities to AI-based edge applications like servers and even automobiles.”

Samsung’s LPDDR5X is a next-generation mobile DRAM designed to significantly boost speed, capacity and power savings for future 5G applications. In 2018, Samsung delivered the industry’s first 8Gb LPDDR5 DRAM and today, the company is aggressively moving beyond mobile markets with the first 16Gb LPDDR5X DRAM.

The LPDDR5X DRAM will offer data processing speeds of up to 8.5 gigabits per second (Gbps), which are over 1.3 times faster than LPDDR5’s 6.4Gbps. Leveraging the industry’s most advanced 14nm DRAM process technology, it will also use around 20% less power than LPDDR5 memory. In addition, the 16Gb LPDDR5X chip will enable up to 64 gigabytes (GB) per memory package, accommodating increasing demand for higher-capacity mobile DRAM worldwide.

Later this year, Samsung will begin collaborating with global chipset manufacturers to establish a more viable framework for the expanding world of digital reality, with its LPDDR5X serving as a key part of that foundation.

The company will look to broaden its pacesetting mobile DRAM lineup with continuous improvements in performance and power efficiency, while also reinforcing its market leadership with greater manufacturing agility.

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today announced the industry’s first integrated power management ICs (PMICs) — S2FPD01, S2FPD02 and S2FPC01, for the fifth-generation double data rate (DDR5) dual in-line memory module (DIMM).

One major design improvement to the newest generation DRAM solution involves integrating the PMIC into the memory module — previous generations placed the PMIC on the motherboard — offering increased compatibility and signal integrity, and providing a more reliable and sustained performance.

For improved performance efficiency and load-transient responses, Samsung’s new PMICs for DDR5 modules have been equipped with a high-efficiency hybrid gate driver and a proprietary control design (asynchronous-based dual-phase buck control scheme).

This scheme allows the DC voltage to step down from high to low with a fast transient response to changes in the output load current and adapts the conversion accordingly to efficiently regulate its output voltage at near-constant levels. The control scheme also features both pulse width and pulse frequency modulation methods, preventing delays and malfunctions when switching modes.

“With enhanced power efficiency and low output ripple voltage, the new PMICs S2FPD01, S2FPD02 and S2FPC01 allow data centers, enterprise servers and PC applications to take full advantage of their DDR5 performance for highly demanding, memory-intensive tasks,” said Harry Cho, vice president of System LSI marketing at Samsung Electronics.

Two of Samsung’s new DDR5 DIMM PMIC solutions, the S2FPD01 and the S2FPD02, offer optimal performance for today’s data center and enterprise servers that must run heavy analytics, machine and deep learning, and other various computing tasks in real time. The FPD01 is designed for modules with low density; FPD02 for higher density.

In addition, by implementing a high-efficiency hybrid gate driver instead of a linear regulator, Samsung’s new PMICs can operate at up to 91-percent power efficiency.

The S2FPC01, Samsung’s other new PMIC, is tailored for use in desktop or laptop PCs. Designed on a 90-nanometer (nm) process node, the PMIC solution offers a more agile performance in a smaller package.

Samsung’s DDR5 DIMM power management ICs, the S2FPD01, S2FPD02 and S2FPC01, are currently being sampled to customers.

Recently, nine key Samsung memory products – four DRAM solutions, three solid state drives (SSDs) and two embedded storage (eStorage) devices* – earned Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) labels from the UK-based Carbon Trust for their significant role in reducing climate impact and helping with the transition to a low-carbon economy. These PCF labels were awarded after a thorough review of each product’s carbon impact, from the raw material extraction stage through production, distribution, use and disposal. The PCF certification also provides a reliable measure of the electricity, water and gas used during memory chip manufacturing.

Contributing to a Sustainable Future

The 512GB uFS 3.1 was recognized with the industry’s first ‘Reducing CO2’ label

In addition to the PCF label, Samsung’s 512GB eUFS 3.1 – the company’s latest smartphone storage memory – was recognized with the industry’s first ‘Reducing CO2’ label for eliminating more carbon emissions than the previous generation, Carbon Trust-certified 512GB eUFS 3.0.

The ‘Portable SSD T7 Touch’ is the first semiconductor product to be recognized as a green (eco-conscious) product by the Korean Ministry of Environment

Samsung’s T7 Touch SSD also received a ‘low carbon product’ certificate from the Korean Ministry of Environment (MoE), making it the first Korean government-certified green semiconductor product in Korea. The low carbon certificate is given to products that achieve a minimum of 3.3 percent carbon reduction over the previously MoE-accredited product generation.

The material used for the T7 Touch SSD’s packaging is made out of eco-friendly pulp

By using one-third less tray packaging, replacing the plastic trays with eco-friendly pulp material and minimizing greenhouse gas emissions throughout its production, the T7 Touch SSD saw a 5.1 percent reduction in its carbon footprint compared to the previous generation product. This translates to an annual savings of approximately 84 tons of carbon – about the same amount of CO2 absorbed by 13,000 30-year-old pine trees in one year.

Comparing the packaging of the T5 SSD (left) and T7 Touch SSD (right)

The new certifications are in addition to Samsung’s Hwaseong Campus in Korea having recently become the industry’s first semiconductor site to earn the Carbon Trust Standard for Water, in recognition of its sustainable water management.

“Through the continuous reduction of our carbon footprint, we are committed to improving environmental sustainability across our semiconductor business operations,” said Chanhoon Park, executive vice president and general manager of Global Infra Technology at Samsung Electronics. “Moving forward, we will strive not only to achieve greater competitiveness with our semiconductor technologies, but also ongoing leadership in sustainable environmental efforts.”

* DRAM products: SODIMM 8GB; HBM2 8GB; LPDDR5 12GB; GDDR5 8GB
SSDs: PM1733 U.2 15.36TB; 860 EVO 500GB; SSD T7 Touch 1TB
eStorage solutions: EVO Plus microSD card 128GB; eUFS 3.1 512GB