SK Hynix starts shipping low-power, high-efficiency LPDDR5X chips

SK Hynix Inc., the world’s second-largest memory chipmaker, said on Wednesday it has begun selling low-power, high-efficiency DRAM chips called LPDDR5X, which it hopes to become the industry’s new standard soon.

The South Korean chipmaker said it recently completed the development of the new chip using High-K Metal Gate (HKMG) process technology – the industry’s first to adopt the technology for a mobile DRAM chip.

Operating in the ultra-low voltage range of 1.01V to 1.12V set by JEDEC, the international semiconductor standards council, the company’s LPDDR5X chip uses 25% less power than its previous models, boasting the industry’s lowest electricity consumption for DRAM chips.

By applying HKMG process technology, the latest chip has also improved its performance speed by a third to 8.5 gigabits per second (Gbps), it said.

According to SK Hynix, using HKMG technology for the insulation layer reduces current leakage and improves power efficiency, making such chips especially suitable for energy-consuming data centers.

Low-Power Double Data Rate, or LPDDR DRAM, is becoming the standard for a variety of devices because of its low-power and high-performance characteristics, expanding its use beyond smartphones to PCs, high-end computing (HPC) and servers.

LPDDR memory is also an important component in vehicles as a massive amount of data processing is required for autonomous driving.

As the need for faster, smaller and more power-efficient memory increases across various sectors, chipmakers expect LPDDR DRAM to be widely used in the artificial intelligence (AI) and metaverse businesses.

DDR5 is the next-generation DRAM chip, boasting faster speed and higher density with reduced power consumption compared to DDR4 chips.

SK Hynix, which became the industry’s first chipmaker to release DDR5 DRAM in October 2020, aims to enhance its presence in the growing market.

Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s largest memory chipmaker, said last month it has successfully proven the performance of its latest LPDDR5X DRAM on Qualcomm Technologies Inc.’s Snapdragon mobile platform at the industry’s fastest speed of 8.5 Gbps.

Write to Ji-Eun Jeong at jeong@hankyung.com
In-Soo Nam edited this article.