Speaking at this year’s International Solid-State Circuits Conference, which ends today, Samsung unveiled their new LPDDR3 DRAM chips. The new chips decrease power consumption over the LPDDR2 chips, drawing 1.2V of power. The 4 Gigabit chips also enjoy a major increase in data transfer speeds, with speeds reaching 6.4 Gigabits per second (Gbps).
The chips represent a significant advance in smartphone technology, in large part because of their lower power consumption. As smartphones have become more feature-rich, they have required increased battery power to function. Despite some advances, battery technology has remained largely the same. Lowering the power consumption of key components like RAM allows manufacturers to squeeze more life out of device batteries while keeping them small enough to fit inside the kind of lightweight mobile device customers demand.
Increased data transfer speeds on RAM chips will also make for smartphones that are better equipped to handle high definition video and the increasingly technically demanding games that are beginning to appear on smartphones.
Samsung is planning to start distribute the chips to smartphone manufacturers beginning in the second quarter of this year, with the chips beginning to make their way into smartphones within the next year.
I contacted Samsung in an effort to get a little more information about the chips and when they might be hitting the market, but as yet have not received a reply.
[via TechOn]