Samsung used this year's Tech Day to draw attention to upcoming memory products, among other things. These include the new graphics card memory GDDR7, DRAM of the 1b generation and 3D NAND of the eighth generation as well as 1000-layer music of the future. A 5G modem was presented for smartphones with the Exynos 5300.
GDDR7 accelerated to 36 Gbit/s
Samsung had already roughly outlined the plans for the upcoming GDDR7 memory for graphics cards last year. There was talk of up to 32 Gbit/s, now Samsung even calls 36 Gbit/s. The throughput increases significantly compared to the current GDDR6 memory. GDDR6 with 24 Gbit/s is currently the maximum.
Samsung has not yet revealed when the first GDDR7 memory will appear. Details on the new “real-time error protection feature” are also still pending.
The next steps for (LP)DRAM
DDR5 DRAM with 32 Gbit (4 GB) storage capacity per chip will soon be available for the main memory. As is well known, the economical LPDDR5X for smartphones will be further accelerated to 8.5 Gbit/s after the intermediate step with 7.5 Gbit/s.
Samsung meanwhile gave a rough date for the new DRAM production stage 1b: This is still under development and the start of mass production is targeted for 2023. Samsung has been mass-producing the 1a DRAM for a year.
3D-NAND: From V8 to V9 to 1,000 layers
< h3 class="text-width text-h3" id="section_vnand_v8_with_high_density">High Bit Density V-NAND V8
Samsung calls its 3D NAND flash for products such as SSDs, memory cards and smartphones “Vertical NAND” or V-NAND for short. Samsung is currently mass-producing the seventh generation with 176 layers. In terms of storage density, however, it lags behind the products of the competition. With the eighth generation (V8) with probably more than 230 layers, that should change. The TLC-NAND with 3 bits per memory cell is said to deliver the highest bit density for this type so far in the 512 Gbit variant. Samsung speaks of an increase of 42 percent. This would mean arithmetically around 12 Gbit/mm², because the predecessor achieved 8.5 Gbit/mm².
By the end of the year, Samsung plans to offer TLC-NAND with 1 terabit per die. In this respect, Micron is ahead of the industry, because the US company is already mass-producing TLC-NAND with 1 terabit, 232 layers and the highest areal density for TLC-NAND to date of 14.6 Gbit/mm². In the first half of 2023, SK Hynix aims to produce its 238-layer NAND, which is expected to have a similar areal density but only 512 Gbit on a tiny die.
V9 to 2024, 1,000 layers to 2030
Samsung has also now announced that the new generation of its 3D NAND aka V-NAND V9 is already in development. The start of series production for this is targeted for 2024, but there are still no details on the architecture.
By 2030, Samsung wants to stack more than 1,000 layers on top of each other. However, it remains to be seen whether this long-term goal will be achievable.
QLC is here to stay
Samsung also wants to promote the switch to QLC-NAND with 4 bits per cell. At the previous Tech Day, the company promised QLC-NAND with significantly increased performance. So far, the slow write rate and potentially lower durability have been clear disadvantages of QLC SSDs, which are also hardly cheaper than TLC SSDs. With advances in QLC-NAND, this memory could potentially see more use in the future and eventually replace TLC-NAND. But when it comes to the announcements of the new NAND generations, TLC is still clearly the focus.
Going without a dedicated DRAM cache is a trend in consumer SSDs that saves money and energy. Thanks to the Host Memory Buffer NVMe function, in which part of the system RAM serves as an SSD cache, the lack can be well concealed in everyday tasks. At Tech Day 2022, Samsung presented the PM9C1a, a new SSD without DRAM that supports both PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 5.0.
New chips for smartphones and cars
With the Exynos 5300, Samsung also presented a new generation of multi-mode modems for the Tech Day, which covers all mobile radio standards up to the current 5G. Details about the changes compared to the current Exynos 5123 are still pending. The current modem has been used in Samsung's own Exynos SoCs since the Galaxy S20 series and is also used in the Google Pixel 6 (Pro) and the latest Galaxy S22 series. For the automotive segment, however, the Exynos Auto V920 is new to record infotainment systems. With Exynos Auto V7 and Exynos Auto V9, Samsung currently has two 8 nm solutions from 2019 and 2021 in its range. A new display controller (Display Driver IC, DDI) especially for QD OLED panels still has to do without technical data.
Samsung has also exhibited the current flagship SoC Exynos 2200 from our own development, which is used in the European Galaxy S22 series as an alternative to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, as well as the ISOCELL HP3, a 200 MP sensor for smartphones, the pixel size of which is only 0.56 µm. Due to miniaturization, camera modules in smartphones will in future be up to 20 percent smaller with the same resolution. The ISOCELL HP1 was Samsung's first 200-megapixel sensor when it was launched in September 2021 and is currently used in the Motorola Edge 30 Ultra and the recently announced Xiaomi 12T Pro.