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Samsung has announced the mass production of 12 Gb (1.5 GB) LPDDR4 DRAM chips on a 20nm process. The state-of-the-art was previously 8 Gb. The new DRAM chips could enable the production of smartphones with 6 gigabytes of RAM:
The production of 12Gb chips opens up the possibility of smartphones and tablets with 6GB of RAM using a four 12Gb chip DRAM package, as well as 3GB using just two chips in a package. A 6GB package would also only take up the same amount of space as existing 3GB packages which use 6Gb chips. The new 12Gb chips also end up being very slightly more than 30% faster than their 8Gb chips, with a per-pin speed of 4266Mbps which would give 34Gbps of bandwidth over a 64bit bus. With Samsung beginning mass production of this new memory it's only a matter of time before we start to see more devices move from 2GB to 3GB and from 4GB to 6GB of RAM.
There are several phones on the market with 4 GB of RAM, such as the Oppo Find 9, Xiaomi Mi Note Pro, ASUS ZenFone 2, Sony Xperia Z4, Lenovo K80, Huawei Ascend D8, and soon, Micromax's YU5050. These manufacturers could use 12 Gb chips to create phones with 6 GB of faster RAM without using additional chips.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Thursday September 10 2015, @09:48AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday September 10 2015, @12:42PM
The Foxconn document from July got the camera details right, so it should also be right about the 2 GB of RAM.
Apple A8 has 2 cores. Apple is known for making its mobile processors more powerful than other ARM chips, despite lower core counts. They also add less cores to new chips. So they may add a third core to the A9.
iPhone 6/6 Plus has 1 GB LPDDR3 RAM, so Apple could move to LPDDR4 for the new phones and save power, even when doubling to 2 GB.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @01:56PM
Is SRAM less power hungry (because it doesn't need refresh)? If so, maybe it would make more sense to put SRAM in the phone. Sure, you'll not get 6GB of it in your phone, but if in return you get a longer battery life time, the tradeoff would probably be worth if (moreover AFAIK SRAM is faster than DRAM, so that's yet another advantage).
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday September 10 2015, @03:48PM
Is SRAM less power hungry (because it doesn't need refresh)?
SRAM doesn't need refresh, but it is still volatile memory. DRAM is a leaky capacitor and so needs a refresh to charge the capacitor. SDRAM synchronises the refresh cycle with the read/write cycle to minimise latency. SRAM is just an array of flip-flops and is more power-hungry than DRAM. It's also a lot less dense (and area roughly corresponds to power, when talking about this kind of circuit).
sudo mod me up