Samsung has begun volume production of its 8Gb LPDDR4 memory chips, with expected commercial shipments in 2015.
Moving to a new memory standard should significantly reduce the memory subsystem’s power consumption and will provide significant boosts to clock-speed.
Samsung claiming that its LPDDR4 can hit 3.2GHz, if the wind is behind it and it is going downhill. Meanwhile the mobile bus widths are significantly smaller than the 64-bit channels used by desktops and the higher clock speed per chip will help close the gap between the two.
Vendors are claiming that LPDDR4 clock speeds will outpace DDR4 thanks to its higher amount of total bandwidth potentially delivered to tablets and smartphones. Meanwhile, the power savings are expected to be substantial.
While there is no serious risk of a desktop or laptop DDR4 system being outperformed by a tablet or smartphone there is some indication that the gap might be closing a little.
So far no manufacturers have announced plans to adopt LPDDR4 in specific products, but once Samsung is shipping in volume it is going to happen quickly. Hot Hardware is predicting that the Galaxy S6 would be a good first candidate.
