Advanced Power Management

In response to increasing demand for reduced power consumption by devices, the JEDEC LPDDR2 standard offers several power-saving features. LPDDR2 includes a reduced interface voltage of 1.2V from the 1.8V specification in the previous (LPDDR) memory technology, which will result in a reduction in power consumption of over 50% under similar device density and performance conditions. The standard further encompasses devices having a core voltage of 1.2V (as compared to existing 1.8V core voltage devices), further decreasing device power consumption. In addition, LPDDR2 supports advanced mechanisms for managing power usage such as Partial Array Self Refresh and Per-Bank Refresh. Partial Array Self-Refresh, for example, allows portions of the array to be powered down when not required, permitting applications to determine device memory requirements on a real-time usage basis.

Shared Memory Interface

For the first time, a single JEDEC standard encompasses two distinct types of memory: NVM and SDRAM. The JEDEC LPDDR2 standard allows these two memory types to share a common bus interface, thereby reducing the controller pincount and facilitating increased memory package density. LPDDR2 NVM and SDRAM devices can be stacked, with a common interface, greatly simplifying memory controller and interface designs and offering space-saving opportunities to product developers.

Fast, Scalable Performance


In the JEDEC LPDDR2 standard, multiple device configurations are supported to meet the requirements of a wide array of mobile devices, including:

• An operating frequency range from 100MHz to 533MHz
• Data widths of x8, x16 and x32
• Two pre-fetch options (2 and 4-bit) as well as 1.8, 1.35 and 1.2 Volt core voltage options
• A wide range of device densities (NVM: 64Mb-32Gb, DRAM: 64Mb-8Gb)

With the flexibility to select device options that best meet the needs of each individual application, designers will have the capability to ensure the best cost, power, and performance for their products.

Download JESD209-2E, JEDEC LPDDR2 (free download with registration).