SK Hynix began mass production of 1anm DRAM using EUV equipment
SK Hynix announced that it has begun mass production of 8Gigabit (Gb) LPDDR4 mobile DRAM products based on 1a nm-level process technology this month. This is the fourth-generation 10nm process technology and is a low-power DRAM specification developed for mobile terminals.
Starting with 10nm-class DRAM products, the semiconductor industry names each generation of process nodes with letters, the first generation is 1x nm, the second generation is 1y nm, the third generation is 1z nm, and the fourth generation is 1a nm. SK Hynix expects to be able to supply mobile DRAM products with 1a nm-level process technology to smartphone manufacturers from the second half of this year. What’s more special this time is that SK Hynix has completed the verification of its stability by partially adopting EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet) technology, and used EUV lithography equipment for mass production for the first time.
SK Hynix expressed that it is very much looking forward to the productivity increase brought by the new technology, and to further enhance the competitiveness in terms of cost. It is expected that the 1a nm-level process technology can be used in the case of the same size wafer, the number of DRAM products produced has increased by 25% compared to the previous generation of 1z nm-level process technology, which helps to alleviate the supply shortage in the global market. With the migration of technology, more and more semiconductor companies use EUV lithography equipment to produce chips. The technological leadership of a semiconductor company depends on how to make full use of DUV lithography equipment.
The rate of the new product will stabilize at 4266 Mbps, which is the fastest transmission rate in the standard LPDDR4 mobile DRAM specification, and the power consumption will be reduced by 20%. SK Hynix will apply 1a nm-level process technology to its DDR5 products from early next year. In the future, both Samsung and Micron will use EUV lithography equipment to produce DRAM products, but Micron will be later and will wait until 2024 as planned.
