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from the on-our-way-to-a-portable-Cray dept.
Samsung has announced an 8 GB LPDDR4 DRAM package intended for smartphones and tablets, using four 16 Gb (2 GB) chips manufactured on a 10nm-class process (probably 18nm):
Samsung this week announced its first LPDDR4 memory chips made using its 10nm-class DRAM fabrication technology. The new DRAM ICs feature the industry's highest density of 16 Gb, are rated to run at 4266 MT/s data rate, and open the door to more mobile devices with 8 GB of DRAM.
Earlier this year Samsung started to produce DDR4 memory using its 10nm-class DRAM manufacturing process (which is believed to be 18 nm) and recently the firm began to use it to make LPDDR4 memory devices, just as it planned. The thinner fabrication technology allowed Samsung to increase capacity of a single LPDDR4 DRAM IC to 16 Gb (up from 12 Gb at 20nm introduced in August, 2015) while retaining a 4266 MT/s transfer rate.
The first product to use the 16 Gb ICs is Samsung's 8 GB LPDDR4-4266 mobile DRAM package for smartphones, tablets, and other applications that can use LPDDR4. The device stacks four memory ICs and provides up to 34 GB/s of bandwidth when connected to an SoC using a 64-bit memory bus. The 8 GB DRAM package comes in a standard 15 mm x 15 mm x 1 mm form-factor, which is compatible with typical mobile devices, but Samsung can also make the package thinner than 1 mm to enable PoP stacking with a mobile application processor or a UFS NAND storage device.
The press release confirms the high data rate:
The new 8GB LPDDR4 operates at up to 4,266 megabits per second (Mbps), which is twice as fast as DDR4 DRAM for PCs working typically at 2,133 Mbps per pin. Assuming a 64 bit (x64) wide memory bus, this can be viewed as transmitting over 34GBs of data per second.
Tune in next year when I post about Samsung putting 12 GB of RAM in smartphones.
Previously:
Samsung Announces 12Gb LPDDR4 DRAM, Could Enable Smartphones With 6 GB of RAM
Samsung Announces "10nm-Class" 8 Gb DRAM Chips
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @12:16PM
Does this memory include Rowhammer mitigations?
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday October 26 2016, @12:39PM
Well, it is a 64, rather than 72 bit memory bus, so no.
(Score: 2) by Sarasani on Wednesday October 26 2016, @12:48PM
I figured Samsung would have preferred to remain silent for some time re their messing about with mobile phones.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday October 26 2016, @04:51PM
That Samsung is a customer of this Samsung, but this Samsung also has other customers, namely pretty much anyone doing cellphone designs.
That Samsung also has another few hundred cellphone designs in development, so the loss of a flagship is a shame, but not preventing the rest of the navy from moving ahead.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday October 26 2016, @01:08PM
This kind of hardware could push smartphones SoCs to the higher frequencies and bandwidth we need from our desktops. From there, SATA and PCI-e aren't too much of a stretch. It's really sad how long we've been waiting: https://marcin.juszkiewicz.com.pl/2016/07/25/aarch64-desktop-hardware/ [juszkiewicz.com.pl]
compiling...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday October 26 2016, @02:57PM
Agreed. The ARM builders are so focused on mobile that anything for the desktop would have to be a mobile chip. I wish we would see an up-to-date iMX from NXP (formerly Freescale). Those have a decent amount of I/O including PCIe, SATA, CAN, Gigabit and up to 4 cores. Documentation is also easy to access. But they are sadly pretty dated. AMD should explore that area with a quad/octo core 64 bit ARM paired with Radeon graphics and maybe throw 10gig ethernet in along with USB C and PCIe.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Wednesday October 26 2016, @01:50PM
I hope.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @02:06PM
It's on fire!!!
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Wednesday October 26 2016, @09:43PM
Will it be a single in-line explosion, or a parallel detonation ?
On a side note : When will the devices stop being smart phones and just be portable computing devices ? I look forward to the day when I don't need a 'smart'-phone and a laptop or tablet device but can use just a single device for on call/emergency response and business phone.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27 2016, @01:58PM
"Will it be a single in-line explosion, or a parallel detonation ?"
No, it's a faster phone so it's just going to blow up faster.