Samsung Creates 4 Gb (512 MB) LPDDR3 RAM for Smartphones

Samsung likes to use as many of its own resources as possible when making consumer or business/enterprise products, and the new DRAM it invented proves it.

The company has an extensive collection of phones, but this is merely one of its many business outlets, one that it has only indirectly served just now. 

Long story short, Samsung has unveiled a new memory chip, a DRAM with a capacity of 4 Gb of the LPDDR2 variety.

4 Gb translates into 512 MB, not a modest amount by any measure, especially for mobile devices.

Speaking of which, the company designed the DRAM for its series of smartphones, especially the mainstream ones.

"It will be the mainstream DRAM for smartphones this year," the company reportedly said.

Built on the 30nm manufacturing process technology, the 4 Gb chip works at up to 1.6 Gbps, about twice as fast as most mobile DRAM.

Then again, with the widespread adoption of HD video, and smartphone tendency to try and support this format, a rapid data rate has come to be considered mandatory.

Moving on, the bus width is of 32 bits and the maximum data transmission rate of the entire chip is 6.4 Gbps (1.6 Gbps is the transmission rate per terminal).

Furthermore, the chip is divided amongst eight banks and eight prefetches, while the area is of 82 square millimeters.

Finally, the power supply voltage is 1.2V, meaning that Samsung doubled the maximum data transmission rate per terminal without changing the power supply voltage.

Samsung may or may not use the 4 Gb LPDDR2 in its tablets. Since they are more likely to need to play HD and 3D videos, fast memory is even more important to them than it is to phones. All will become clear at some point later in the year (2012).

Posted in: Hardware, Mobile Phone, Preview