Industry-First 1c DDR5 Set for 2025 Volume Shipment as SK hynix Announces DRAM Breakthrough
Mass Production Expected to Be ready This Year for Volume Shipment in 2025
SK hynix Inc. has announced that it has developed the 1c DDR5, the industry’s first 16Gb DDR5 built using its 1c node, the sixth generation of the 10nm process. The success marks the beginning of the extreme scaling to the level closer to 10nm in the memory process technology.
The degree of difficulty to advance the shrinking process of the 10nm-range DRAM technology has grown over generations, but SK hynix has become the first in the industry to overcome the technological limitations by raising the level of completion in design, thanks to its industry-leading technology of the 1b, the fifth generation of the 10nm process.
SK hynix said it will be ready for mass production of the 1c DDR5 within the year to start volume shipment next year.
In order to reduce potential errors stemming from the procedure of advancing the process and transfer the advantage of the 1b, which is widely applauded for its best-performing DRAM, in the most efficient way, the company extended the platform of the 1b DRAM for development of 1c.
1c DDR5 Enhances Its Predecessor by a Mile
The new product comes with an improvement in cost competitiveness, compared with the previous generation, by adopting a new material in certain process of the extreme ultra violet, or EUV, while optimising the EUV application process of total. SK hynix also enhanced productivity by more than 30% through technological innovation in design.
The operating speed of the 1c DDR5, expected to be adopted for high-performance data centres, is improved by 11% from the previous generation to 8Gbps. With power efficiency also improved by more than 9%, SK hynix expects the adoption of 1c DRAM to help data centres reduce the electricity cost by as much as 30% at a time when advancement of th Artificial Intelligence (AI) era is leading to an increase in power consumption.
“We are committed to providing differentiated values to customers by applying the 1c technology equipped with the best performance and cost competitiveness to our major next-generation products including HBM, LPDDR6, and GDDR7,” said Kim Jonghwan, Head of DRAM Development at SK hynix. “We will continue to work towards maintaining the leadership in the DRAM space and position as the most-trusted AI memory solution provider.”
