Samsung today announced that it started mass production for its 12-gigabit (Gb) LPDDR5 mobile DRAM, aimed at premium flagship smartphones, and optimized for 5G an AI applications. Samsung first produced its LPDDR5 RAM disk in July last year, and just five months ago started mass production for the 12Gb LPDDR4 RAM chips.

With mass production of the 12Gb LPDDR5 built on Samsung’s latest second-generation 10-nanometer (nm) class process, we are thrilled to be supporting the timely launch of 5G flagship smartphones for our customers worldwide. Samsung remains committed to rapidly introducing next-generation mobile memory technologies that deliver greater performance and higher capacity, as we continue to aggressively drive growth of the premium memory market — Jung-bae Lee, executive vice president of DRAM Product & Technology, Samsung Electronics

Samsung says the 12Gb LPDDR5 is approximately 1.3 times faster than previous mobile memory LPDDR4X, with a data rate of 5,500 megabits per second (Mb/s). Whether this memory will be the one powering the 5G specced out Galaxy Note10 is yet unknown, but Samsung is planning on developing a 16Gb LPDDR5 next year, which is a good indication of where 5G flagship smartphones are headed in 2020.