Samsung unveils faster RAM that will help phones compete with PCs

By Saul Berenbaum May 1, 2013

samsung galaxy s4 base macro — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Samsung has announced that it’s already begun manufacturing faster new RAM (Random Access Memory) for its smartphones, Hot Hardware reports. The chips represent the industry’s first ultra high-speed, 4GB, LPDDR3 Mobile Memory built on a 20nm-class technology. Or, more plainly, it’s 30 percent faster than current RAM, 10nm smaller, and offers a 20 percent power conservation boost. In practice, that translates to roughly 17Gb per second transfer speeds.

How fast is 17Gb per second? In one second, you could transfer roughly half of any of the Lord of the Rings extended edition Blu-ray movies through the RAM and memory of a phone. Downloading a file at such speed is impossible unless you live in a data center, of course. But if you do, maybe you’ll want to own a future Samsung phone?

The new mobile chips offer comparable speed and performance to the standard DRAM tech found in desktop computers and laptops. They’re clocked at data transfer speeds up to 2,133 megabits per second, per pin – more than double the 8000MBps LPDDR2 tech – though that won’t mean much to those of you who aren’t engineers.

Young-Hyun Jun, Samsung’s executive vice president for memory sales and marketing, told media, “By providing the most efficient next-generation mobile memory with a very large data capacity, we are now enabling OEMs [Original Equipment Manufacturers] to introduce even more innovative designs in the marketplace… Our 20nm-class four gigabit mobile DRAM provides another example of our ability to deliver well-differentiated, high-performance, high-density memory to customers in a timely manner.”

Best of all, the new chips won’t necessitate any upgrade in the size of Samsung’s products. The company says manufacturers can have a 2GB package with four of their new chips in a single package that meets the memory package height of 0.8mm.

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