Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 May Push for LPDDR6 Support This Year, Apple A18 to Miss Out

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, which is confirmed to be released later this week, may support LPPDDR6 memory. For reference, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 did support LPDDR5T, but most manufacturers still ended up putting their money on LPDDR5X.

Apple’s A18 Pro May Miss Out on the LPDDR6 Upgrade this Year

Apple Silicon’s next generation of flagship mobile APs, presumably titled A18 Pro (to be used in iPhone 16 Pros), may skip this upgrade and stick to LPDDR5T. According to Korean news outlets, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 may be the first mobile SoC ever to support LPDDR6 in commercial smartphones.

With these SoCs, the main hurdle lies in the foundries’ partners, as they are the ones who make the final call on sourcing the right set of memory modules that suit their plans. This is why Vivo’s X100 Pro, which was released earlier last November, was rumored to come with LPDDR5T, but it, too, skipped the upgrade and settled with LPDDR5X.

Since Apple may not incorporate LPDDR6, Qualcomm’s 8 Gen 4 may add another advantage to its tally. This time, the Android SoC manufacturer may keep it close to the industry leader, Apple, which has been at the top for almost 11 consecutive years.

The LPDDR6 DRAM Modules Will Be Finalized By the 2nd Half of 2024

Samsung and Sk Hynix, two of the world’s leading DRAM manufacturers, are ramping up the production of these LPDDR6 modules. According to Ajunews, the International Semiconductor Standards Organization (JEDEC) will finalize these modules by the second half of this year, so it is safe to assume that the chances of it being incorporated into Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 are slim.

The same source also pointed out that LPDDR7 may debut in NVIDIA’s upcoming set of RTX 5000 series and AMD’s RDNA4 GPUs.

This is all we know for now, but rest assured that we will keep you updated as new information becomes available.

via: Ajunews