SK hynix’s 18GB LPDDR5 memory: enormous power in a tiny package

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Smartphones weren’t just revolutions; they were also revelations.

The ability to carry a fully loaded multimedia device in a pocket transformed the way billions of people communicate, work, and play. And, since the first commercially viable smartphones hit the market, device and component manufacturers have been beefing up their capabilities so that the latest flagships now rival high-end desktop PCs in terms of raw power.

Much of the latest advancements in smartphone processing capabilities come from LPDDR5, the fifth generation of low-power double data rate memory (also known as mobile DRAM). First introduced in 2019, LPDDR5 represents a significant leap forward from previous generations of memory.

Blistering performance in a compact package

Testing by JEDEC, which develops standards for the microelectronics industry, has shown that LPDDR5 doubles the memory throughput of LPDDR4, showing a data rate of 6,400 megabits per second (Mbps) versus 3,200 Mbps for LPDDR4.

Fig. 1: LPDDR5 represents a steep climb up from previous versions of mobile DRAM

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This was made possible by a significant redesign of mobile DRAM architecture, as the capabilities of LPDDR4 and its iterations were maxed out. LPDDR5 introduces new command-based power systems that reduce how many contact pins are needed for data transfer while also improving power consumption.

Even compared to LPDDR4x, which reduced power consumption by lowering the input/output (I/O) voltage (VDDQ) of LPDDR4 memory from 1.1V to 0.6V, LPDDR5 provides significant advancements, demonstrating a 50% improvement in data transfer speeds and a 30% drop in power consumption.

These are significant achievements in the world of smartphone components, which must fit into palm-sized form factors and must rely on batteries with limited power supplies. In fact, LPDDR5 memory will enable a new wave of development in system-on-chip development that will enable both smartphones and laptops to deliver top end processing speeds and performance while integrating all computing functions into a single integrated circuit.

Smartphone manufacturers around the world are eager to roll out LPDDR5 devices. In fact, LPDDR5 already represents 10% of the mobile DRAM market, with Omdia, a market research institute, estimating that it will grab more than 50% of the market by 2023.

Expanding the limit of computing power

SK hynix is already pushing the envelope when it comes to LPDDR5 memory. In March of 2021, the company announced that it became the first to mass-produce 18GB LPDDR5 modules.

Capable of supporting data transfer rates of up to 6,400 megabits per second, the highest speed bin supported by current LPDDR5 specifications, SK hynix’s modules show 18GB capacity, the largest capacity in the industry. In more concrete terms, this means smartphones equipped with SK hynix’s 18GB LPDDR5 memory can transfer up to ten 5GB full-high-definition movies per second.

Fig. 2: LPDDR5-equipped smartphones have an array of
features that provide a better mobile experience

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For average consumers, this will provide a bevy of immediately discernible improvements. These include improved connectivity to data-intensive 5G networks, faster download speeds, smoother cloud computing experiences, better camera performance, extended battery life, and even better high-resolution displays.

Gamers will be the first to get a taste of 18GB LPDDR5’s capabilities when the ASUS ROG Phone 5 Ultimate rolls out later in 2021. Powered by SK hynix’s lightning-fast memory module, the phone will allow users to max out the settings on graphically intense 3D games. And, perhaps more importantly, mobile gamers will finally earn bragging rights over PC gamers still limited to 8GB and 16GB memory slots.

Undiscovered potential

LPDDR5 represents the new frontier in smartphones and computing. Still in its infancy, the technology offers significant untapped potential as manufacturers like SK hynix start exploring how they can maximize the computational potential of an LPDDR5 module.

In the future, developers hope that LPDDR5 will offer enough power to enable smartphones to feature on-device artificial intelligence and machine learning. Both are incredibly data-hungry applications that currently require the capabilities of cloud computing to execute. Moving them directly onto a smartphone will enable the devices to learn about their users much faster and provide experiences better tailored to users’ preferences.

With all of these developments, SK hynix continues advancing its own capabilities and looking at what’s next for LPDDR5 memory while also working to manufacture even more powerful modules.

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At SK hynix, we must acutely understand these technologies as we work with partners to bring these next-generation technologies to life. In this article, we look at some of the top industry statements around technologies including 5G, big data, and autonomous vehicles, and set the record straight.

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1. Artificial Intelligence can teach itself to walk, talk, see, and be conscious of its own existence.

MYTH. It is one of the most popular plots in science fiction movies and shows, but the truth is AI requires significant amounts of human knowledge and engineering to be able to perform the tasks that benefit our daily lives. While with advanced engineering and human supervision AI systems have learned to do things like walk, talk, and see but there are no current facts that would suggest these systems will be conscious of their own existence. We are safe from any robot revolution…for now.

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2. Virtual reality will be at the forefront of how we work and play.

FACT. One of the most talked-about technologies for the past decade has been virtual reality. Many believe that the technology appears to be more of a trend, but analysts still predict increased growth year over year. In fact, forecasts project massive growth in both AR and VR headset sales in the coming years, with both technologies combined expected to sell over 26 million units per year by 2023.¹

With increased interest in virtual reality with adventure, action, and simulation games, the market is projected to grow to more than 16 billion by 2022.² Virtual reality is also seeing increased use in the workplace with its use in virtual enhanced conference calls that can transport you around the world.

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3. 5G will close the digital divide and instantly connect rural areas around the world.

MYTH. While 5G is continuing to be rolled out across the world, it will not solve our problems overnight. Many of us may already be seeing 5G hit our smartphones but the fact is there are many countries and even areas in the U.S. see unreliable internet access and mobile data. It could be that until 5G becomes more widespread, the digital divide may actually widen even further. However, when fully deployed, 5G promises to greatly enhance the speed, coverage and responsiveness of wireless networks for all.

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4. Autonomous vehicles are unsafe and easily hacked.

MYTH. The safety benefits of self-driving vehicles are significant with the potential to save lives and reduce injuries as 94% of serious crashes today are due to human error.³ Though as more and more cars become connected with built-in WIFI and digital capabilities, cybersecurity does become an issue that automakers and technology companies need to account for.

However, when it comes to autonomous vehicles, connectivity is a bit different. Self-driving cars will be connected to a larger system of vehicles and infrastructure, so it becomes much harder of a task to hack an entire complex system rather than a current individual vehicle on the road today.

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5. Big data generated annually is doubling every two years.

FACT. According to the World Economic Forum, the entire digital universe is expected to reach 44 zettabytes by 2020.⁴ Due to the recent popularity of photo and video sharing apps, this number is increasing exponentially every year, and doubling every two years. Companies need to figure out how to meet this demand and rely on storage and processing power as well as strong analytics capabilities to harness big data.

SK hynix’s semiconductor memories are positioned to tackle big data. They collect and analyze large amounts of unstructured data in real-time from data center servers and can operate with high performance, high capacity and low power consumption.

Setting the record straight

At SK hynix, our goal is to make people’s lives easier and give our partners best-in-class technology to harness the power of these next-generation technologies. It is built in our culture to be transparent in this process and make sure that these technologies are clearly defined to meet the needs of those who rely on it.

The expansion of the 4th industrial revolution technology will continue to see semiconductor memory prosper. By delivering innovative, high-performance and reliable products to our customers, SK hynix will continue to be a leader in the industry.

¹ H. Tankovska, “Augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) headset shipments worldwide from 2020 to 2025”, Statista. (2020)
² Thomas Alsop, “Virtual Reality (VR) – statistics & facts”, Statista. (2020)
³ “Automated Vehicles for Safety”, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. (2020)
⁴ Jeff Desjardins, “How much data is generated each day?”, World Economic Forum. (2019)

The post Fact or Myth: Setting the record straight about next-gen technologies first appeared on SK hynix Newsroom.

The post [Invisible Memory : Part.3] Semiconductor Memory in Our Smart Cities first appeared on SK hynix Newsroom.

We’ve talked about how semiconductor memory connects our homes – running through our appliances, supporting our gaming systems and enabling our smart fitness equipment. But how does it connect our homes to other homes, and cities to other cities?

Whether we realize it or not, the beating heart of modern life is powered by semiconductor memory. In cities around the world, memory-enabled technology like 5G connectivity, IoT capabilities, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence (AI) and automotive tech keep our lives running at lightning speeds.

The world is positioned to expand how AI products think and learn, to build networks of smart cities and hospitals through IoT’s enhanced data depth, to help autonomous vehicles process information and make split-second decisions as they learn new roads and situations, to discover new worlds through augmented reality, and to lift communities out of the dark by bringing Big Data to light.

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Beating Heart of Modern Life

Today, the world runs on 5G. The 5th generation mobile network, 5G was designed to connect anyone – anywhere, any time – at ultra-fast speeds. Our smartphones, computing devices, smartwatches, and smart medicine machines all rely on 5G to receive and transmit information around the world at record speeds. Industries from transportation to healthcare to information processing benefit from the high performance and efficiency of the 5G network, and all of the technologies it enables.

And behind all of these smart devices and machines is the need for memory. Generally speaking, more information transmitted means more information stored – and the more information stored, the greater the need for sophisticated memory systems.

Source : Pixinoo/Shutterstock.com

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For Heightened Security

One of these memory-enabled technologies is facial recognition CCTV – which relies on memory to process and store the data from billions of unique faces. In China, two AI companies called Megvii and Sensetime¹ are providing face recognition AI technology to governments and police forces.

Just recently, their technology was instrumental in catching a criminal in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, China. The suspect was identified by concert security footage that was a match with a face in the country’s surveillance database. In Malaysia, the police force has even begun to use this type of facial recognition technology in body cams to capture images of suspected criminals and quickly check them against the police database. According to E2 Technologies², these tools have helped reduce the crime rate in regions where they are used.

Source : Bear Robotics

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Autonomous Goods and Services

AI technologies have more light-hearted uses as well – especially in the worlds of hospitality and dining, where robots are now helping with everyday functions in hotels, restaurants and bars. At Amichi’s³, a pizza restaurant in Mountain View, California, a self-driving robot named “Penny” is serving orders.

And they’re not alone – more and more American restaurants are using memory-embedded robots from simple food preparation to serving and washing dishes. Robots not only streamline the work of restaurant employees, but also reduce overall operating costs. According to The Spoon, 2020 will be the year for ‘food robots’ to enter the market in earnest.

Similary, as autonomous vehicles for the delivery are quickly approaching on the horizon, they require functions such as multi-camera vision processing and self-driving in order to monitor surroundings around the vehicle. Thus, ultra-huge computing processing has become necessary, so has semiconductor memories.

In fact, over the last few years, and across many states in the US, autonomous vehicles for the delivery of food and goods have been approved for real-world testing from some of the top automakers and technology companies including General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Google’s Waymo, and Uber, among many others. These companies have been partnering with grocery stores, restuarants and small businesses to help ease the problems of first/last mile delivery.

Source : Nuro’s blog site. Nuro R2 self-driving delivery vehicle in Houston, Texas

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Technology startup Nuro⁴ partnered with grocery giant, Kroger, to launch pilot cities in Scottsdale, AZ and Houston, TX, where they have been testing autonomous vehicle delivery for residents with its small toaster-shaped vehicles, called R2’s. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company has seen increased use as the company can safely deliver groceries to citizens and limit person-to-person contact.

Creating Memory for the Future

As the world grows increasingly reliant on high-speed connection, demand for DRAM and NAND Flash memory solutions is higher than ever. And memory providers like SK hynix are innovating nonstop to keep up.

These technologies – and the memory systems that support them – are leading the way towards the smart cities of tomorrow, and SK hynix is at the forefront of the movement towards the future of information technology.

¹Blake Schmidt, “Hong Kong Police Already Have AI Tech That Can Recognize Faces”, Bloomberg. (2019)
²Amanda Lentino, “This Chinese facial recognition start-up can identify a person in seconds”, CNBC. (2019)
³Ahn Jung-rak, “Cooking is basic, serving and washing dishes… Robot wind blowing in an American restaurant”, Hankyung. (2019)
⁴Dave Ferguson, “Introducing R2, Nuro’s Next Generation Self-Driving Vehicle”, Medium. (2020)

Puzzle:

The post [Invisible Memory: Part.3] Semiconductor Memory in Our Smart Cities first appeared on SK hynix Newsroom.

One of the biggest trends is the expansion of health and fitness companies entering the technology space. U.S. fitness equipment manufacturer, Peloton, has been getting increased attention with its business model that combines fitness equipment and video streaming services. The company has its instructors and coaches streaming in real-time in which users can participate through the attached screen on their Peloton treadmill or stationary bike.

Source: Peloton Press Site

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It has not only the function to live-stream classes but also is able to provide a customized health service by collecting and analyzing the personal workout frequency, intensity and body mass index. All of these features have contributed to Peloton’s success in recent months and propelled it to become a household name as a disruptor in the fitness industry.

Source: Mirror

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Other companies like Mirror have also benefited from the success of this technology in the space. The company provides customers with an interactive mirror-like screen that tracks and teaches you as you work out, using artificial reality (AR) technology to make it feel like your personal trainer is in the room with you. The device comes with a Bluetooth heart rate monitor so you can truly track how hard you’re working and allows you to compete with others in live and on-demand classes.

As these new business models look to add more technology to interact more intimately with consumers, they are generating an overwhelming volume of data with high-resolution real-time video data from live streamed fitness classes, and the collection of user information such as workout frequency, intensity, and body mass index. According to Netflix.com, streaming an HD video for an hour generates about 3GB of data, so you can imagine how much hundreds of thousands of live and on-demand video classes held daily by these digital fitness companies are producing.

According to the report titled “Global Interactive Fitness Market 2020-2024” by Technavio, the interactive fitness market is expected to grow by USD 5.44 billion during 2020-2024. According to Technavio, the rising trend of “exergaming” is anticipated to boost the growth of the global interactive fitness market.¹ There is already an increased need for memory as we are seeing significant data being generated by these companies who are requiring data quicker and more efficiently.

Across the globe

Source: Mordor Intelligence

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We expect to see an increased relevance between the memory semiconductor and health businesses with companies continuing to highlight key technologies in big data, AI (Artificial Intelligence) and data centers. According to the report titled “Semiconductor In Healthcare Market – Growth, Trends, And Forecast (2020 – 2025)” by Mordor Intelligence, the semiconductor in healthcare market is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 10.2%, during the forecast period (2020 – 2025), given the increasing investments in research and innovation centers, government programs, and governmental policies that are favoring the IT health equipment and devices markets.² As we can see from cases like Peloton and Mirror, the expansion of the markets will inevitably lead to the explosion of data and growing demand for advanced memory solutions.

Other forms of fitness technology such as fitness trackers and monitoring devices are also contributing to massive data generation boom, where memory chips are also used. These devices are becoming significantly more popular as they can track everything from your heart rate and steps taken to glucose levels for those with diabetes. You could imagine the multiple benefits of these devices offer as they track and log significant data on a daily and even hourly pace to give users valuable personal health information and advice. They also provide users with daily motivations and achievable goals to hold users accountable to live a healthier life.

With the number of these types of devices increasing and functions expanding with each new generation, there will continue to be a strong growth of memory semiconductors in the market across the globe. These memory solutions not only contribute greatly to the devices themselves but in data centers around the world in order to effectively store and properly utilize the information generated.

SK hynix’s 16Gb (Gigabits) DDR5 (Double Data Rate 5) DRAM

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Memory as a Key

All of this data generated is increasing at a daily rate. As more companies look to join this new growth area, the industry is requiring stable memory solutions with high speed and capacity to properly deliver these offerings to customers who are excited about the possibilities of how technology can enhance their health and fitness experience at home. To do this, analyzing big data is the core of digital fitness and health businesses, and advanced memory solutions in both devices and data centers are key to this vision.

“The live video streaming of digital fitness services realized via AR requires both high-spec user devices and data traffic processing capacity at back-end. It means that to analyze big data utilizing AI, the entire system must be able to process high capacity data,” said Young Choul Kim, Project Leader (PL) at Computing Marketing Team of SK hynix. “At the current stage, the end user devices such as mobile connected devices conduct basic calculations with LPDDR4 DRAM, and data centers receive the results to process more complex analysis with high-performance DDR4 DRAM. In the future, end user devices will adopt High Bandwidth Memory 3 (HBM3) or LPDDR5 DRAM, and DDR5 DRAM will play key roles in back-end processing and analysis in data centers.”

In fact, with diverse factors driving, demands for memory semiconductors from data center clients are surging which helped reduce suppliers’ stock levels in 4Q of 2019. According to the DRAMeXchange research division of TrendForce, 4Q19 NAND flash bit shipment increased by nearly 10% QoQ thanks to demand growth from data center clients.³

As AI and big data greatly expand into more commonplace applications, semiconductors are especially important to reliably store and manage vast amounts of data. Memory devices are used to collect and analyze large amounts of information in real-time.

Kim commented, “As digital revolution expands into various industries, the amount of data needs to be processed is increasing dramatically. It becomes more and more important to utilize the big data to understand the present and foresee the future. As a result, demands from data centers are growing simultaneously.”

Not just a trend

From 2020 onward, it is expected that the memory semiconductor industry will continue to grow with the continued increase in demand from data center clients, supported by various industries including digital fitness and health industry. New startups, such as Tempo, are joining the space to incorporate AI and big data with digital fitness services, while more established companies like Fitbit are expanding their offerings to meet the unique demands from customers.

This is the reason we see a large makeup of the world’s most innovative companies on lists from news outlets like Fast Company and Forbes feature largely HealthTech companies. At SK hynix, we are prepared to meet the needs as predictions for the increased demand for this technology grow into the next decade. We are excited at the possibilities we are seeing from numerous newly arising industries as there are always greater demands for faster and more reliable memory solutions.

¹Jesse Maida, “Global Interactive Fitness Market 2020-2024, Growing Awareness Among People about Healthy Lifestyles to Boost Market Growth”, Technavio. (2020)
²“Semiconductor in Healthcare Market – Growth, Trends, And Forecast (2020 – 2025)”, Mordor Intelligence. (2019)
³Ben Yeh, “Driven by Strong Demand from Data Center Clients, 4Q19 NAND Flash Revenue Grows 8.5%, Says TrendForce”, TrendForce. (2020)

The post Never Work Out Alone! – Interactive Digital Fitness at Home first appeared on SK hynix Newsroom.

But this tedious waiting ends soon. As 5G service begins in earnest and computing technologies keep developing, the popularization of “cloud gaming” is going to be realized soon. Cloud gaming allows users to play games right away with any internet-connected device, without any installation process. It means that gamers’ “Brave New World” is finally opening.

New Gaming Environment Using “Cloud Service”

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Cloud gaming is a kind of streaming service¹. All a user needs to enjoy the game is an input device and a displaying device to show the gaming screen. Data required for playing the game is stored within the central server, instead of individual devices. Data processing and calculation to execute input orders are also done in the central server, where the data is installed.

There are two general methods of streaming a cloud game. “Video” streaming method transmits the gaming data saved in the server to individual devices via a relay point called “thin client”; the data is also transmitted from individual devices to the server through this when saving as well. As thin clients play only a role of facilitating the data transmission between the server and the user, small memory capacity is enough for them to function. The other method is the “file” streaming method, which first uses the minimum amount of cache to start the game initially, and then downloads the required data as the game proceeds.²

In other words, in a cloud gaming service, transmitting the control value entered by the user with a controller, and displaying the received game execution results on the screen are all that users’ devices do. Cloud gaming is a totally different mechanism compared to the one in previous games where all the tasks were done in users’ devices. It allows users to enjoy high-spec games without a high-end computing system or a large storage capacity to install the data.

One of the other strengths of cloud gaming is that users can enjoy the same gaming content on different devices anytime, anywhere. It is because both the installation and additional updates are all done in servers in real time. For example, users can continue playing the game on their mobile device that was previously played on a PC, by receiving the previous gaming data via servers. Also, with cloud gaming service, video games that were previously available only on consoles can be played on tablet devices as well.

It is expected that the latest online games or virtual reality (VR) games that were previously only available on high-spec PC can be played on a TV or a smartphone, simply by attaching a tiny, network-connected console device.

Gaming Industry’s “Survival Competition” Triggered by Semiconductors, and the Acceleration of Profit Model Changes Led by Cloud Gaming

The gaming industry expects that as cloud gaming provides innovative gaming environments, it will become the next-gen gaming platform. Some even think that cloud gaming is the only way to survive in the fierce competition in the gaming industry, because the game graphics are improving and the volume of data required for a game is getting larger, all of which require more and more hardware specs to run a game.

For the first time in the industry, “Final Fantasy 15” which was released last year required storage capacity exceeding 100GB. Along with that, the latest video game “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” cannot even run without more than 175GB of storage space (according to the official minimum specification). A game requiring more than 200GB storage space will soon appear in the near future. This means that most storage capacity of a 256GB SSD would be needed to store the data of one single game.

This situation encourages users to purchase a separate storage device or a high-spec PC in order to play certain games, and it’s not favorable for both users and video game companies which want to sell more game packages to a larger number of users.

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In particular, the appearance of the new graphic technology called “Ray tracing” is expected to be the crucial turning point. Ray tracing literally tracks back rays to light sources from the viewpoint (“camera”) in order to calculate how rays interfere with objects that the graphic engine aim to visualize. It is the more advanced method of graphics processing because instead of simply visualizing the surface of the objects which our eyes see, the processing unit “simulates” lighting environment surrounding the objects and as a result displays them as they look in the real life.³

In August 2018, NVIDIA unveiled new graphics processing unit (GPU) – GeForce RTX based on Turing architect which supports ray tracing graphics rendering, enhancing the graphics quality in video games to the actual real life level. The problem is that the realization of ray tracing in a gaming console is not that easy, unlike in a PC where Ray Tracing can be realized simply by adopting NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX series graphics card. While the price of a console is around USD 400, the price range of GeForce RTX is approximately from USD 400 to 1,000. Considering the profit structure of the current gaming console industry, it is not easy to equip a ray tracing-capable graphics card on a gaming console.⁴ This means global video game companies focusing on gaming consoles are now in a situation where they have to seek for a new breakthrough.

The field that is considered as a breakthrough is the cloud gaming service. Through the IR Day 2019 in May, Sony unveiled the next-generation PlayStation (PS), which can realize ray tracing technology, and announced its strategies for cloud gaming in the future. The main point was that it will reinforce PS4’s remote play function, adding a role of a small-sized home data center to the next-gen PS console. There are a number of video games which used to be exclusive on PS consoles, but Sony now plans to allow users to enjoy these video games on different devices, by connecting the PS console with other devices such as PCs and smartphones via network.

Likewise, at the world’s largest video game exhibition “E3 2019” in June, Microsoft also presented its cloud gaming technology called “Project xCloud,” with which users can play high-resolution, high-capacity Xbox games on a smartphone without any download and installation process. As Microsoft has been already operating Azure server in 140 countries and 56 regions, a high level of stability is expected. In South Korea, Microsoft has been providing a test service since October last year, through a partnership with SK Telecom.

Global IT Big Players Join the Battle to Dominate the Growing Cloud Gaming Market

It is expected that this kind of paradigm change would offer a new opportunity to global IT companies which have been providing cloud services for a long time. It is because they can utilize their excellent data server infrastructure with no extra investment, which they have established for the existing business. For example, IT companies with little relation to the gaming industry such as Google and Amazon are taking aggressive actions in the cloud gaming industry.

Google started to provide a cloud gaming platform service based on its web browser (Chrome), called Stadia, from November 19th, in North America and 19 countries in Europe. The biggest strength of Stadia is Google’s IT infrastructure. In the market, it is pointed out that Google has more competitive advantages compared to its competitors in terms of its capability for operating servers, as Google operates diverse services from web search engine, video streaming service (YouTube), to its own cloud service.

Another IT company with high expectations in the cloud gaming industry is Amazon, which provides a live video streaming service called Twitch. Amazon is also one of the global top cloud business operators. In 2017, Amazon took over GameSparks, a cloud gaming service provider in England and Ireland. Early last year, its plan for launching a cloud gaming platform was unveiled through a local media outlet, and the industry also expects that Amazon’s new cloud gaming platform will be launched in 2020.

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It is expected that the size of the cloud gaming market will grow very rapidly. According to the report announced in April 2019 by the global market information provider IHS Markit, the size of the cloud gaming market was USD 387 million (KRW 470 billion) in 2018, and that it will reach USD 2.5 billion (KRW 3.04 trillion) in 2023, by over six times.

“5G Network Innovation,” the Key to the Popularization of Cloud Gaming

Since early 2000, the gaming industry has been focusing on the development of cloud gaming service to dominate the market in advance. In terms of technology, the first cloud gaming technology was presented by G-cluster at E3 in 2000. In terms of service, an early-stage cloud gaming service presented by Onlive in 2010 is considered to be the first one.

However, cloud gaming services in the early stage lacked competitiveness to be popularized. The latency occurred in certain internet environment, causing the delayed responses to users’ input. Another problem was the low video resolution during gameplay due to the need for compression of transmitted data.⁵ Especially, in the case of online games where multiple users access to the same network, network issues were frequent. Expensive service fees were another obstacle for popularization of the early cloud gaming service as well.

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Nonetheless, with the commercialization of 5G technology, a new era for cloud gaming has arrived. The minimum internet data transfer rate required for cloud gaming service is approximately 10Mbps.6) In theory, 4G network environment with peak rate of 1Gbps, latency of 10ms, and user-experience rate of 10Mbps is sufficient for the operation of cloud gaming services. However, when it comes to the user-experience gaming environment, 4G network based cloud gaming is not sufficient compared to the previous gaming mechanism which runs video games utilizing local data installed in the individual device.

On the contrary, 5G network environment supports peak rate of 20Gbps, latency of 1ms, and user-experience rate of 100Mbps, enabling cloud gaming to be operated smoothly. Specifically, 5G supports one-tenth of latency compared to 4G, which is critical in user order input/output delay issues. It is expected that a real-time gaming environment can be established with 5G. Considering the actual gaming environment where multiple users are connected to one single server, this gap is even more significant.

5G and “Memory Semiconductors,” Putting the Finishing Touch to Cloud Gaming

Once the cloud gaming service is commercialized, one single server must be able to process numerous subscribers’ game data at once. While it depends on the number of subscribers, the semiconductor industry is expecting that hundreds of Zeta FLOPS⁷ of data will be generated in the cloud gaming service a day around 2021 to 2022.

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To process the enormous amount of data, data servers usually utilize a High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). While the number of data passages (input/output, IOs) in the current DRAM is 4, 8, or 16 at most, HBM provides 1,024 IOs. This means that HBM can calculate a large volume of data at once, contributing to improving the data processing rate in a server.

Byoungjin Jung, Technical Leader (TL) of PC Client / Embedded at DRAM Product Planning at SK hynix said, “In data centers, adoption of DRAMs over 1,024 IOs such as HBM products will be expanded. While DDR4 will be utilized as main products in general, the shift to DDR5 is expected in a few years.”

In the course of processing game data on a server, the role of graphic DRAMs which help data processing in an accelerator is very important. As a kind of GPU, an accelerator has multiple cores so that it can execute multiple calculations simultaneously, unlike a central processing unit (CPU) where data is processed in high speed with one single core. With this feature, accelerators are mainly used for big data or artificial intelligence (AI) technologies recently. Furthermore, they are playing a key role in processing a large volume of data in cloud servers.

Graphic DRAMs store required data whilst calculations are made in each core within an accelerator, then receive and transfer the calculated data. The performance of existing GDDR6, or even below GDDR6 level is totally enough to process the calculations required for cloud gaming service.

Whan-young Choi, TL of Graphic / Auto at DRAM Product Planning said, “As graphic DRAM’s performance improves, a larger volume of data can be saved at once, and the time required for reading and writing the data can be shortened. The future technological development will be focused on enhancing the processing efficiency within the same amount of physical space.”

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Memory semiconductors are also essential for establishing a 5G network environment, which is one of the prerequisites for the cloud gaming service. Network-specified DRAMs are equipped to the individual network device, storing packet data while the device system decides where to transfer certain packet data and which one to process first, and calculates them.

“To rapidly transfer the data calculated within the network system, a DRAM of a relatively high bandwidth is necessary. Also, as the DRAM must function in a wireless environment, efforts to reduce the power consumption should be made as well,” said Byoungjin Jung “Accordingly, it is anticipated that more than 256 IOs for each system will be required, and for this, 4CH products of LPDDR lineup or customized LPDDR products specialized in securing IOs should be crucial.”

¹A service which transfers and plays multimedia files such as audio (music) or video files in real time by utilizing networks
²“Content Industry Trend of the U.S.: Current Status and Outlook of the U.S. Cloud Gaming”, Korea Creative Content Agency (2019)
³Yoon-ku Kwon and Hee-seok Jeong, “Korea Investment & Securities Co., Ltd. Global Company Issues Next Big Thing: Cloud Gaming Industry”, Korea Investment & Securities Co., Ltd. (2018)
⁴Yoon-ku Kwon and Hee-seok Jeong, “Korea Investment & Securities Co., Ltd. Global Company Issues Next Big Thing: Cloud Gaming Industry”, Korea Investment & Securities Co., Ltd. (2018)
⁵In-ae, Jang, “Global Cloud Gaming Market Trend with the Arrival of 5G Era”, National IT Industry Promotion Agency (2019)
⁶“Global Gaming Industry Trend: Influence of 5G on Gaming Industry and 5G Policies by Major Countries”, Korea Creative Content Agency (2019)
⁷Floating-Point Operations per Second (FLOPS) is the number of operations made in floating-point levels in one second. In this context, it is used as a unit representing the volume of data processed. Zeta is a unit representing 1 sextillion (10²¹).

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