Samsung today announced the mass production of the industry’s first 12Gb LPDDR5 mobile DRAM. It’s optimized for enabling 5G and AI features in upcoming smartphones. The Galaxy Note 10 is the company’s next flagship smartphone and there’s a good chance that it will tout this new memory chip.

A 12Gb RAM variant is already expected to be available for the Galaxy Note 10. It may obviously be limited to more expensive configurations with greater onboard storage. The new flagship will be available with up to 1TB of internal storage. It’s due to be announced on August 7.

12GB RAM enters mass production as Galaxy Note 10 launch nears

One year ago to the day, Samsung had announced the mass production of the first 8Gb LPDDR5 DRAM for smartphones, mere weeks before the Galaxy Note 9 was launched. Samsung is being very consistent in this regard, introducing its 12Gb LPDDR5 DRAM ahead of the Galaxy Note 10 launch on August 7.

This new memory chip comes four months after Samsung started mass producing the previous generation 12Gb LPDDR4X in March. It’s built on the company’s latest second-generation 10nm process. With a data rate of 5,500 MB/s, the new chip is approximately 1.3 times faster than the 4266 Mb/s LPDDR4X.

When it’s made into a 12GB package, the LPDDR5 can transfer 44GB of data, the equivalent of 12 full-HD movies, in just one second. There are also efficiency gains to be had there. The new chip uses 30 percent less power than its predecessor. The gains have been achieved with a new circuit design that has enhanced clocking, training, and low-power feature.

As a leader in the global memory market, Samsung is always pushing the envelope on what’s possible. The company says that it expects to develop a 16Gb LPDDR5 mobile DRAM this year. This would give it even more of an edge in the market.