Micron Shipping LPDDR5 DRAM
by Billy Tallis on February 6, 2020 8:30 AM EST
Micron has announced their first LPDDR5 DRAM is in mass production and now shipping to customers. The new RAM is significantly faster and more power efficient than LPDDR4x. One of the first products to use the new LPDDR5 will be the upcoming Xiaomi Mi 10 smartphone.
Micron's LPDDR5 is available in 6GB, 8GB and 12GB packages, with speeds of 5.5Gbps and 6.4Gbps per pin. The faster speed grade is a 50% improvement over their fastest LPDDR4x products (4266Mbps per pin), and Micron also claims better than 20% reduction in power use compared to LPDDR4x. Micron will also soon be offering multi-chip packages pairing LPDDR5 with UFS-based flash storage; these products will be available sometime during the first half of the year.
The most visible applications for LPDDR5 will be this year's crop of flagship smartphones, but Micron is also targeting automotive and networking applications with the obligatory references to 5G and AI driving demand for faster memory.
Related Reading:
- Micron’s DRAM Update: More Capacity, Four More 10nm-Class Nodes, EUV, 64 GB DIMMs
- Samsung Starts Production of LPDDR5-5500 Devices: 12 GB of DRAM in a Smartphone
- Samsung Announces First LPDDR5 DRAM Chip, Targets 6.4Gbps Data Rates & 30% Reduced Power
- Samsung Starts Production of 16 Gb LPDDR4X Chips Using 2nd Gen 10nm Tech
- Micron Kicks Off Mass Production of 12 Gb LPDDR4X DRAM Chips
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
33 Comments
View All Comments
milkywayer - Thursday, February 6, 2020 - link
And dell will be buying this and putting a whole total of 4GB ram again in their $1000 xps laptops next year.haukionkannel - Thursday, February 6, 2020 - link
Waste not want not!PeachNCream - Thursday, February 6, 2020 - link
That's assuming that Intel's mobile line gets around to supporting LPDDR5 by next year. Given how long it took to get entirely off LPDDR3, I think we're more likely to see Dell get trickle down sometime in 2022 at which time they might decide we really only need 2GB of RAM at $1200 which is due to inflation of course.Techtree101 - Thursday, February 6, 2020 - link
Specifically simulation type of games like Civilization, Cities Skylines, etc. Ones that tend to prefer higher frequencies (both CPU and memory, and lots of cache).milkywayer - Thursday, February 6, 2020 - link
This is gonna give me nightmares and I won't be surprised if they do it. Cheap fewksvalinor89 - Thursday, February 6, 2020 - link
"Micron's LPDDR5 is available in 6GB, 8GB and 12GB packages"Would'nt the minimum be 6GB?
plopke - Thursday, February 6, 2020 - link
In before OEMs ask "can't you make 4gb dimms" so we can screw over our customers for a other couple of years. The artificial segmentation these days is beyond ridicules,hopeless and sometimes just sad in many industries.milkywayer - Thursday, February 6, 2020 - link
Yup. Even if you don't need a faster cpu or the 4k screen, getting more ram on these ultra lights mean spending almost $2000 just for 16gb ram version compared to the 4gb base $1000 xps 13. And the eco friendly fun part - ram is not user upgradable so you can throw it out in the trash on a few years when it won't run heavier apps / os.Nexing - Saturday, February 8, 2020 - link
Yes, polpke and milkywayer, it must me saddening and souring to see through like that in those many industries, more so if it includes the ecology angle...So, here is an invigorating advice from Vandana Shiva, that might help you (as it did with me). Surprisingly, even if she is talking about terrible situations on the many interviews where she is denouncing unknown state of things, she is always talking with a rather a gentle tone and a smile in her face.
So once, the interviewer directly asked her about that, and she said something like this: "when I talk, I focus on the awareness and good I try to divulge. I am happy to be able to do this part, and it's better than being angry and sad every time there is something to denounce."
That single piece of wisdom meant hard homework, that I am yet to happily complete.
Cheers
Retycint - Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - link
The surface pro is a particular egregious offender of this - you pay $300 just to upgrade from 128GB to 256GB (that's a whopping $2400 for 1TB when scaled up), and another $200 to upgrade from 8GB to 16GB of RAM.Meanwhile, if you bought a laptop with upgradeable ram, you can easily buy a 1TB NVMe SSD for $130, and 8GB of extra RAM for $40. Shocking difference from Microsoft prices