New Samsung DRAM Boasts of 12.8GB/s Transfers
Samsung’s been pretty busy with its successful Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets, along with the Nexus S, but the company this morning reminded us all that it’s not been resting on its laurels when it comes to hardware.
Samsung today revealed that it’s developed a 1GB DRAM for mobile devices that boasts a wide I/O interface and low power consumption to boot. The new mobile DRAM is capable of transmitting data at 12.8GB per second, an eightfold increase in bandwidth when compared to mobile DDR DRAM, and it’s made possible by the use of 512 pins for data input and output compared to the last-gen mobile DRAMs’ 32 pins. All this comes with a reduction in power consumption amounting to roughly 87 percent.
"Following the development of 4Gb LPDDR2 DRAM (low-power DDR2 dynamic random access memory) last year, our new mobile DRAM solution with a wide I/O interface represents a significant contribution to the advancement of high-performance mobile products," said Byungse So, senior VP of memory product planning and application engineering at Samsung Electronics.
"We will continue to aggressively expand our high-performance mobile memory product line to further propel the growth of the mobile industry," he continued.
Samsung’s next move is to provide 20nm-class 4Gb wide I/O mobile DRAM sometime in 2013.
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Jane McEntegart is a writer, editor, and marketing communications professional with 17 years of experience in the technology industry. She has written about a wide range of technology topics, including smartphones, tablets, and game consoles. Her articles have been published in Tom's Guide, Tom's Hardware, MobileSyrup, and Edge Up.
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saturnus 8 times faster and 87% less power consumption? The mobile industry does look like the driver for development that the PC industry was a few years ago. Not really surprising when we know that the mobile industry ships over a billion units every year while the PC industry ships about a fifth of that.Reply -
And what cost is associated with connecting 512 lines for communication. Is this achievable in other sitiations like package on package?Reply
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rantoc Hope its GB and not Gb ? In that case only 1.6GB/sec. Typos have happened before so might as well ask!Reply -
ImagineTek rantocHope its GB and not Gb ? In that case only 1.6GB/sec. Typos have happened before so might as well ask!Reply
It is right, although my mind does become befuddled when I think what practical uses a 12.8GB/sec transfer on a phone might be. Any suggestions? -
ewood ImagineTekIt is right, although my mind does become befuddled when I think what practical uses a 12.8GB/sec transfer on a phone might be. Any suggestions?Reply
so my girlfriend can play the new angry birds... in all seriousness that sounds like an insane amount of bandwidth for a smartphone.Maybe new mobile GPUs will need more bandwidth when they are used in tablets with the larger resolution -
mister g I'm hoping they're putting as much effort into developing DDR4 desktop RAM, GPUs already have GDDR5 why can't we have DDR4?Reply -
rantoc ImagineTekIt is right, although my mind does become befuddled when I think what practical uses a 12.8GB/sec transfer on a phone might be. Any suggestions?Reply
Considering most phone 3d "gpu"'s (not that i really consider a phones gpu worthy of the name gpu but that don't belong here) lacks dedicated memory it would soon become a bottleneck when for instance outputting 3d on a higher res external display. Other that that it seems like overkill for a phone when their cpu's have so limited I/O as well as computational power.