South Korea unveils world’s 1st 6th-gen DRAM chip that consumes 30% less power

A South Korean company has developed dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chip with the world’s smallest node.

SK hynix, the world’s second-largest memory chip maker, has surpassed Samsung Electronics in achieving a more advanced technology node.

The industry’s first 16Gb Double Data Rate 5 (DDR5), also known as the sixth generation of 10-nanometer, was built using its 1c node.

The Nvidia supplier claims that this success marks the beginning of extreme scaling to the level closer to 10nm in the memory process technology.

Operating speed of 1c DDR5 is improved by 11%

The operating speed of the 1c DDR5 chip is improved by 11% from the previous generation, according to the company. The 1c DDR5 is expected to be adopted for high-performance data centers.

The mass production of the 1c DDR5 is expected to start this year.

“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 HBM1, LPDDR62, and GDDR73,” said Head of DRAM Development Kim Jonghwan.

“We will continue to work towards maintaining the leadership in the DRAM space and position as the most-trusted AI memory solution provider.”

1c DRAM chip to help data centers reduce electricity cost by as much as 30%

With power efficiency also improved by more than 9%, SK hynix expects adoption of 1c DRAM to help data centers reduce the electricity cost by as much as 30% at a time when advancement of artificial intelligence is leading to an increase in power consumption.

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 1b technology, the fifth generation of the 10nm process.

New product by SK hynix comes with an improvement in cost competitiveness

In May 2023, Samsung Electronics had announced it succeeded in mass-producing 1b-nanometer DRAM for the first time in the industry. SK hynix quickly followed suit.

Samsung revealed early this year that it would start mass-producing the 1c DRAM by the end of this year, but hasn’t provided updates since, reported Korea JoongAng Daily .

The race to achieve smaller processing nodes is not irrelevant to the competitiveness of high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, which is a stack of DRAMs for faster data process and which has been in the limelight in light of the AI boom, according to the report.

The new product by SK hynix 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 optimizing the EUV application process of total.

SK hynix also enhanced productivity by more than 30% through technological innovation in design.