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SK Hynix Commences Mass Production of 18GB LPDDR5 RAM Chips for Smartphones With 6,400Mbps Speeds
Android phone makers will continue to push the limits of hardware specifications, and from the looks of it, SK Hynix will lend out more than just a helping hand. The memory manufacturer today announced that it has started mass production of 18GB LPDDR5 RAM chips for flagship smartphones, meaning that premium handsets touting more memory than notebooks will become a commonplace.
SK Hynix claims that its 18GB LPDDR5 RAM for smartphones can operate up to 6,400Mbps, making it around 20 percent faster than the previous-generation LPDDR5 RAM, which could run up to 5,500Mbps. The manufacturer also mentions that it has supplied ASUS with these DRAM chips for the upcoming ROG Phone 5 flagship. Keep in mind that during a specifications leak, the ROG Phone 5 was spotted with the aforementioned RAM count.
Why does a smartphone need 18 GB of memory instead of the previous 16 GB? From the press release:
"This product will improve the processing speed and image quality by expanding the data temporary storage space, as the capacity increases compared to the previous 16GB product," an official from the company said.
So we will see smartphones with 18 GB of RAM, or perhaps smartphones or laptops with 16/32 GB of error correction code (ECC) LPDDR5 memory.
Previously: Samsung Begins Mass Producing 12 GB DRAM Packages for Smartphones
Samsung Mass Producing LPDDR5 DRAM (12 Gb x 8 for 12 GB Packages)
Get Ready for Smartphones with 16 GB of RAM
Samsung Announces Mass Production of 16 GB LPDDR5 DRAM Packages
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 08 2021, @05:27PM
Now I can keep up with the latest in Royal Family racism 20 percent faster. We live in wonderful times.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Monday March 08 2021, @05:43PM (5 children)
So, bigger, longer, and uncut dick pics.
Face it, at this point, you have NO IDEA what the freak you need that much ram for in a stupid toy cell phone. It's just a bigger number, so time to throw everything away and buy all new stuff!
FFS, I don't even need that much on a desktop computer. Most of that memory probably goes towards the 9000 different advertisement tracking and privacy zuckering systems.
16GB? 18GB? Hey, hey, 16K!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IagZIM9MtLo [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by tekk on Monday March 08 2021, @05:59PM (1 child)
Because apps will always grow in memory usage until they require 1.5x the maximum memory available for their platform.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday March 08 2021, @06:12PM
Not the apps, the ads. And the tracking data. All that privacy invasion, face recognition, fingerprint scanning and tracking takes a lot of memory and CPU man. The onus is on the trackees to pony up the money for a first-rate digital servitude experience.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 08 2021, @06:02PM
An anecdote from my computing past.
Dear wife saved up enough, and bought herself a pretty sweet computer, with an AMD Athlon XP 1 ghz CPU, and, believe it or not, 256 MB of RAM. At that point in time, it was a modestly high end consumer product. Windows XP ran alright. I did some tweaking on it, starting with Black Viper's tweaking guide, and made it run better. But, it was sluggish.
My own personal computer at that point in time was a homebrew, sporting a SuperSix mobs, and an AMD 450 mhz mobile CPU. I had just upgraded to a full gig of PC-100 memory. (Memory was still pretty expensive then) Installed Windows XP on one of my hard drives, and performance just blew away that Athlon XP. My machine was responsive, where hers was sluggish, even before I started tweaking Windows.
Time and time again, I've proven to myself that you can never have too much memory.
Smartphones? I've never used a "high end" smartphone. Cheap junk has sufficed, and I can't justify paying $1000 for a portable computer/toy. With only a couple apps running, I've watched those cheapos grind to a standstill. Given sufficient memory, I'm convinced that even a cheap phone can perform quite well. Some of them already have impressive CPUs after all, and addon storage space is cheap. Gotta have the memory to run all the crap that people want, or it's all useless.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Monday March 08 2021, @09:01PM (1 child)
If one of your two smartphones doesn't have 18 GB of RAM, you basically aren't even a real person.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday March 09 2021, @08:56AM
I'm fine then: both of my smartphones don't have 18 Gb of RAM.
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Monday March 08 2021, @05:49PM (4 children)
... five blades are better than three.
That is all.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Tork on Monday March 08 2021, @06:15PM (3 children)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 08 2021, @06:49PM (2 children)
When we realized todays "programmers" #1. aren't, and #2. DGAF about resource optimization anyway.
The presentation layer has become sewer-like.
More RAM is always nice, yes. But if software wasn't garbage nowadays we wouldn't always "need" more.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday March 08 2021, @07:01PM (1 child)
While I agree with the general gist of what you're saying I do have an issue with this specific remark: Camera upgrades alone are going to drive further memory requirements. Record 4k video, edit it, transcode, etc. Additionally I personally am not dying for more memory on my phone... this is where I am drifting off-topic for just a bit... but on my tablet where I do a lot of painting + layers, well let's just say I know exactly how much memory my tablet has. I don't feel like it'll be long before I start doing some sort of creation on my phone, for example modern phones have a lidar sensor, more ram will always be helpful when using apps that need oodles polygons + textures.
Again, this is just a small nitpick not intended as a complete rebuttal. The more we can record the more memory we'll need.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 08 2021, @07:44PM
Apparently, Micron thinks we can have ECC memory in our phones and lower power consumption. That seems like a good reason to make 18 GB packages.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]