Your RAM’s about to get an upgrade. Samsung has announced the world’s first 10-nanometer 8-gigabit DRAM chips, and it promises that they’ll be 30 percent faster and 20 percent more efficient than what went before.
The new memory chips use a much smaller 10-nanometer manufacturing technique than the 20-nanometer version that Samsung’s been using since 2014. That allows it to create circuitry in its memory chips with features that measure just 10-nanometers in size, allowing it to squeeze more onto the same piece of silicon.
And that means improvements in speed and efficiency. Samsung claims its new chips will transfer data at up to 3,200 megabits per second (30 percent faster than the 2,400Mbps that its old 20-nanometer chips managed) while also using 10 to 20 percent less power.
Samsung will package up the 8-gigabit modules into RAM chips for computers at first—from 4GB offerings for laptops, up to 128GB slabs for servers. They’ll be available in the coming months, while chips for smartphones are set to appear later in the year.
[Samsung]