JEDEC and Argosy DDR5 SODIMM Status
DDR5 Market Info.
The
CPU brands, Intel launched Alder Lake-S for Desktop in Nov. 2021, and followed
by Alder Lake-H (for high performance laptop), Alder Lake-P and Alder Lake-U (both
for mobile- ultra notebook) in Feb. 2022, which all supporting DDR5, PCI
Express 5.0 and Thunderbolt 4 Type-C. AMD expect to introduce Ryzen 7000 for
Desktop 3Q 2022, which will support DDR5, PCI Express 5.0 and Type-C up to USB
3.2 Gen 2x2 (20Gbps).
In summary, the
generation of DDR5, PCIe 5.0 and Thunderbolt 4 has come. Argosy’s DDR5, USB4
& Thunderbolt 4 connectors are all entered mass production, and deliver
near 400K pcs DDR5 and 4,300K pcs Thunderbolt 4 Type-C. Our PCIe 5.0 will also be
ready by 2022.
JEDEC & Argosy DDR5 SODIMM Sockets Status
JEDEC not yet published DDR5 262 Pin SODIMM Connector Standard, because the Signal Integrity standard of the 8.0mm and 9.2mm heights are to be determined. Still there were 24 reliability requirement fixed (mechanical, environmental & electrical). The Signal Integrity- skew, impedance and frequency domain were under discussion in 1Q 2022’s meeting, and the S-parameter is likely to adjust to higher criteria.
Though
JEDEC undisclosed vendors’ test result, Argosy conducted self-test and pass the
higher criteria, based on the latest frequency adjustment.
In
fact, we began to deliver DDR5 SODIMM connector (4.0 height) in 1Q 2021, and
the yearly shipment is 290K pcs. There are three reasons why customers are
confident of our DDR5 SODIMM sockets.
(1) 3rd Parties Approved Best Performance
We
joined DDR5 connector spec design with JEDEC & Intel since 2018, and
launched DDR5 SODIMM sockets in 2019. Here are the summary of DDR5 SODIMM
socket’s 3rd party tests.
DDR5
4.0 height pass the Signal Integrity performance, 3 in 5 vendors pass, tested
by JEDEC (Oct. 2020)
DDR5
8.0 height is the ONLY pass Signal Integrity performance among 3 vendors,
tested by JEDEC (Oct. 2020)
Spec-in
over 15 customers, including gaming laptop, commercial laptop, workstation, Chromebook
brands and Intel POC*
DDR5 5.2
height apply to the same SI criteria as 4.0 height; 9.2 height apply to the
same SI criteria as 8.0 height
*POC refers to Proof of Concept
(2) Excellent Design & Manufacture Capability
We
stepped in DDR market since 2006, to manufacture DDR2 & DDR3 sockets. As
technology transition, we continued to develop DDR4 (SODIMM, DIMM SMT & DIP
types) and now the DDR5 (SODIMM, RDIMM & UDIMM) sockets.
Our DDR3/4 SODIMM has gradually increase market share, from 30% in 2016 to over 50% in 2021. In 2021, our DDR3/4 SODIMM shipment achieved nearly 130KK pcs. Today, our DDR SODIMM series production capacity achieves 12KK pcs per month. With the increasing awareness of production re-allocation, we keep expanding production in Taiwan & China, and plan to setup new site in ASEAN.
(3) Well-organized Production Allocation
While COVID-19 outbreak, our factories faced shut down for a short period, but eventually were able to recover over 50% capacity within 3 weeks. Also, no material shortage since epidemic outbreak and even doubled production output in all products.
Summary
To sum up, DDR5 and
DDR4 SODIMM differ in few aspects: DDR5 is 262 pins by adding 2 pins; connector
housing become narrower and latch solder feet adjusted, to save PCB space; data
speed increase 50% by 6.4Gbps; working voltage decrease 30% by 1.1V. All the
improvement encourages gaming, commercial laptop and workstation to upgrade to
DDR5 and highly rise DDR5 adoption to nearly 10% in two years.
Argosy work with JEDEC on DDR5, and exploit our design and production technology to provide reliable quality and stable delivery, and has become customers’ strong supply partner.
Find out the difference between DDR5 and DDR4, click here to down “DDR5SODIMM Introduction” (via Google drive)
