iPhone 5 Memory Size and Speed Revealed: 1GB LPDDR2-1066
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on September 15, 2012 8:53 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- Mobile
- SoCs
- iPhone 5
Quick analysis of the A6 SoC photos from the iPhone 5 launch event tells us all we need to know about the memory interface, speed and bandwidth of the new platform. As always, the A6 features a PoP stack combining the SoC itself and its DRAM. The package-stacked DRAM helps save space, which comes at a premium inside a device as small as a smartphone. PoP stacks are quite common in all modern smartphones.
Apple thankfully didn't obscure the details of its A6 slide at the launch event, which gave us a Samsung part number: K3PE7E700F-XGC2. Through crafty navigation of Samsung's product guide, Brian Klug got us the details. The K3P tells us we're looking at a dual-channel LPDDR2 package with 32-bit channels. The E7E7 gives us the density of each of the two DRAM die (512MB per die, 1GB total). The final two characters in the part number give us the cycle time/data rate, which in this case is 1066MHz.
Plug all of that into our memory bandwidth scaling chart and you get this:
Roughly 33% more peak memory bandwidth than the iPhone 4S, which can definitely help feed the faster GPU and drive the higher resolution display. Many vendors have been shipping LPDDR2-1066 so there's nothing too surprising here. There's understandably less bandwidth than in the 3rd gen iPad of course as the display/GPU requirements aren't nearly as high.
There's more than just memory clocks that will impact memory bandwidth here. It's unclear whether the A6 improves the memory controller Apple deployed in the A5. ARM architectures (especially in the A9 generation) have typically struggled getting good memory bandwidth efficiency. We'll have to see what happens with the A6.
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rocky12345 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link
I get that anandtech has to pay the bills but most of this same info in these little articles will be in the big review that is forth coming. I also stopped reading these little blurbs about the iphone 5 after the second one that was posted this past weekend because it will be the same info we will get in the big review. But I guess it not Anandtech's fault that Apple has been so tight lipped about a lot of the hardware inside the new iphone 5 which in turn makes sites like this have to speculate as to what is going on inside the new idevice. I myself will not get an idevice not because of the hardware being bad I actually think the hardware inside an ipod or iphone is fairly good. I won't get an idevice because of Apple themselves I can not spend my money on a company like Apple that has such terrible business practices & is so sue happy about such stupid things. IF they were to compete with the other companies on a fair playing field without using the court system I probably would own some sort of idevice.Can you think of what it would be like if in other industries there were apple like companies such as the auto industry. We would still be driving cars with tech from 5 years ago because anything knew in cars would be held up being released because of impending court battles. I know companies have to protect their IP but when it gets down to a product being banned because of a shape or icon that is going to far.
LordSojar - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link
8 of the 12 articles under the Pipeline are about Apple. It is a bit out of sorts compared to say a new Samsung phone, or really, any other new electronics product. Even Intel doesn't get this much press when they release an entire new family of processors.Who is more important, Apple or Intel? GIve you a hint, one uses the others chips in their products and would not exist without the other.
erple2 - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link
Clearly, you don't remember the substantial coverage Intel got just recently from the idc. Nor the many articles about haswell that have also been written as new information surfaces.Besides, these snippets are all in the pipeline section. Do you remember what the site was like during the galaxy nexus launch? Of the sgs3 launch? It was much the same.
stacyjose - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link
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