Qualcomm Thumbs Up Samsung's LPDDR5X DRAM For Next-Gen Snapdragon Phones
Certain components tend to hog the limelight when a flagship phone emerges. You know the ones—the SoC (processor and GPU), camera arrangement, storage, and of course the display. What about memory? That matters too, though it's usually the capacity that gets talked about the most. Samsung wants to talk performance, though, and announced that it's cutting-edge LPDDR5X has been validated by Qualcomm for use on its Snapdragon mobile platform.
Samsung and Qualcomm are no strangers to one another. Like practically every smartphone maker on the planet, Samsung employs Qualcomm's Snapdragon silicon on many of its offerings. It also uses its own Exynos hardware in some territories, though in the US, it's always Snapdragon. That includes the Galaxy S22 series.
Samsung developed what it claims is the industry's first 14nm-based LPDDR5X DRAM last November. At the time, it touted speeds up to 8.5Gbps. Samsung has been working with Qualcomm ever since to validate and optimize a 7.5Gpbs version for use with its Snapdragon mobile platforms, and that is now official. And as such, expect to see Samsung's latest LPDDR5X in a bunch of products, from flagship smartphones to automotive applications.
"The successful validation of our LPDDR5X solution for Qualcomm Technologies’ Snapdragon mobile platforms is a testament to our leadership in DRAM technology," said Jinman Han, Corporate Executive Vice President and Head of Memory Global Sales & Marketing at Samsung Electronics. "We expect applications for this high-performance, low-power memory to extend beyond smartphones into the data center, PC and automotive, enabling more devices and systems to run with greater efficiency."
According to Samsung, its 7.5Gbps memory is around 1.2 times faster than the LPDDR5 currently deployed in today's premium smartphones. Samsung says its faster memory chips will help with chores like ultra-high-resolution video recording, as well as AI features such as voice recognition, natural language processing, and so forth.
"Qualcomm Technologies is an industry leader in enabling and adopting the latest LPDDR DRAM specifications. Enablement of LPDDR5X on Snapdragon platforms will enhance user experiences with new features and improved performance for gaming, camera, and applications using our latest AI Engine across various Qualcomm Technologies’ product lines," said Ziad Asghar, Vice President of Product Management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
So there you go—faster LPDDR5X memory from Samsung for cutting-edge smartphones and other devices, now officially approved by Qualcomm.
