In November, Samsung Electronics won a total of 29 ‘CES Innovations Awards® 2025’ ahead of the world's largest and most influential technology event, ‘CES 2025.’ The initial part of our interview with the award-winning team from Samsung Semiconductor features LPDDR5X, which is seen as pivotal in enhancing the performance and efficiency of next-generation mobile devices. We talk to JunYoung Lee, Task Leader (TL) and JinSuk Chung, Principal Engineer of Memory Product Planning Team, who spearheaded the development of the industry's fastest and thinnest LPDDR5X, to unveil the secrets behind their groundbreaking innovation.
JunYoung Lee: LPDDR5X is a memory solution optimized for on-device AI that requires high performance, such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops. As the product name (Low Power DDR) suggests, it is important to achieve the highest speed while operating at low power consumption, considering the characteristics of portable devices that use batteries. It is also an important task to make the chip itself thinner in terms of device thickness and heat generation.
In short, the key is to create a thin chip that delivers enhanced performance with lower power consumption. LPDDR5X achieved the industry's fastest speed of 10.7Gbps and the industry's thinnest thickness of 0.65mm through collaboration with various development departments from planning to design, process, and PKG technology.
JinSuk Chung: Smartphones that primarily use LPDDR5X require a thin memory that supports fast speeds and is advantageous for heat dissipation. This is because it enables a slim smartphone with a long-lasting battery.
To achieve the industry's fastest speed of 10.7Gbps, it was necessary to secure the performance of the high-speed data transmission IO circuit. In addition, a design technology was utilized to lower the internal operating voltage, enabling high-speed operation while simultaneously maintaining low power consumption.
JunYoung Lee: Samsung’s LPDDR5X is the industry's thinnest 12nm-class DRAM. To accomplish this, two chips were combined into one unit, forming a cohesive system of four units, and the EMC (Epoxy Molding Compound), a circuit protection material that protects the semiconductor circuit, was optimized by changing the material. Finally, the development of back-lap technology, which polishes the back of the wafer to maintain operating characteristics and reliability while reducing the wafer thickness, was crucial.
JunYoung Lee: The 10.7Gbps speed was a technology that had not been commercialized before Samsung developed it. Generally, as performance increases, power consumption also increases. However, LPDDR5X needed to minimize power consumption while increasing operating speed, which was the most challenging aspect of development. Since a comprehensive evaluation environment was not available, we had to collaborate with multiple customers, including mobile application processor makers and mobile companies, for development and verification. Actively exchanging technology and collaborating with customers was crucial.
JinSuk Chung: As JunYoung mentioned, the collaboration with customers for development and verification was essential. Within Samsung Semiconductor, I believe the synergy from collaborating with the DRAM Design Group, who were responsible for designing the low-power, high-performance product, and the PKG Development Team, who continuously researched and developed thinner PKGs, was significant in developing the product. collaboration from the internal to the industry-wide across development process resulted in our success and recognition at the CES Innovation Awards.
JinSuk Chung: I would like to talk about the F-DVFS(Full-Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling) technology. Generally, DVFS(Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling) is reducing the power consumption involved in signal transmission by lowering the voltage used in the actual data path to a certain level or lower than other paths during specific cycle intervals. Samsung's F-DVFS technology extends this by allowing voltage adjustments over the full range, from minimum to maximum cycles. This flexibility makes it easier to minimize power consumption by varying the voltage according to the operating speed, thereby extending battery life.
JunYoung Lee: As the demand for foldable products in the smartphone market increases, consumers are looking for slimmer devices. To reduce the thickness of the device, the thickness of each individual component must be reduced. When the thickness of the component is reduced, the air flow space within the device is secured, making it easier to manage heat. This allows for the use of high-performance operations such as games on smartphones without performance restrictions due to temperature rise.
JinSuk Chung: As I mentioned earlier, LPDDR5X has typically been used only in mobile devices where low power consumption is required. However, with AI’s advancement, the datacenter market, which operates large-scale servers, is growing, and ‘power’ efficiency is becoming a critical issue. There is a growing need to adopt LPDDR, which offers better power efficiency and high-performance operation compared to DDR. In addition, its adoption in PCs is also increasing, and the use of Auto LPDDR5X in the automotive market is also increasing due to the spread of electric vehicles and autonomous driving.
JunYoung Lee: As you may be experiencing firsthand with the recent rapid development of the AI industry, technology is advancing rapidly, and the need for memory is diversifying accordingly. Many people think of HBM when they think of AI memory. However, in the market, in addition to products like HBM that require the highest performance regardless of power consumption, there is also a growing need for products like LPDDR that can achieve a certain level of performance while operating at low power. This is also true for LP module products (LPCAMM, SOCAMM, etc.) that are replacing existing DDR modules. In the distant future, LPDDR might become the representative DRAM product. Perhaps my dedication to this product makes me a bit biased.
JinSuk Chung: I agree. The keyword in the recent memory industry is "power." For parallel processing of massive AI data, increased data transfer speed is essential, and this leads to an explosive increase in power consumption. LPDDR5X, which can achieve high performance while consuming relatively low power, is an attractive solution that can respond to changes in computing trends.
JinSuk Chung: We are actively working on the development of LPDDR6, the next-generation solution for 2026. Naturally, LPDDR6 will be a product that is one step further upgraded in terms of performance and power compared to LPDDR5X. When LPDDR6 is launched in the market, we will be able to introduce new innovative technologies similar to those in LPDDR5X.
JunYoung Lee: Also, module-type products such as LPCAMM and SOCAMM are currently being verified with customers, and we are preparing to develop high-performance, low-power DRAM technologies such as LPW which secures high bandwidth by increasing the number of data IO, and LP-PIM which adds computational processing functions. This is expected to expand beyond on-device AI to a wider range of applications, so please anticipate continued advancements in LPDDR throughout the AI era.
In conclusion we have looked at the technology and future of LPDDR5X, which is expanding to various applications from mobile to automotive, servers, HPC, and data centers. LPDDR5X, which won the "CES Innovation Awards," could be seen at the Las Vegas Convention Center from January 7th to 10th next year.
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