Samsung begins mass production of 16GB RAM for smartphones

By Staff reporter | 26 Feb 2020 at 15:43hrs
16GB LPDDR5 mobile DRAM
Samsung announced it has started mass production of its 10nm-based 16GB LPDDR5 mobile DRAM.

The new RAM debuted in Samsung's flagship Galaxy S20 Ultra smartphone earlier this month.

The company said the added capacity will provide premium mobile smartphones with additional capacity for improved 5G and AI features – such as graphically-advanced gaming and smart photography.

Samsung added that in the second half of the year, it plans to mass-produce 16-gigabit LPDDR5 products based on its third-generation 10nm-class (1z) process technology.

Performance increases

The 16GB LPDDR5 package is made up of eight 12-gigabit chips and four 8-gigabit chips.

According to Samsung, the data transfer rate of the 16GB LPDDR5 RAM is 5,500 Mb/s, which is around 1.3 times faster than LPDDR4X's 4,266 Mb/s.

Additionally, when compared to an 8GB LPDDR4X module, the new RAM provides 20% better energy efficiency, Samsung claimed.

While the latter might prove useful when it comes to smartphone battery life, it remains to be seen how these new speeds translate to real-life use.

Although not officially revealed, tear-downs of Apple's current top-of-the-range iPhone Pro Max shows that it only employs 4GB RAM.

Despite this, Apple's smartphones have been able to post comparable performance against their Android competitors.

This is because Apple's iOS platform and Android manage memory differently. While Android uses a method known as garbage collection, iOS employs reference point counting.

Exynos 990 chip

Samsung recently unveiled another piece of powerful mobile hardware - The Exynos 990 processor.

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