Oddly enough, Samsung and Micron currently have smartphones as their primary market, much more in the case of the former, as they also make their own high-performance SoCs. Getting the most DRAM with EUV is a huge blow to the loser, as there are a number of clear improvements that could tip the scales towards the winner in terms of technology.
Samsung begins its journey in EUV with D1z as LPDDR5 DRAM
No llegará, de momento, a PC por su mayor velocidad, consumos y latencias más contenidas, sin olvidar el volumen necesario, pero, sobre todo, porque la DDR5 todavía está lejos para ser la sustituta oficial de la DDR4 que tan buenos momentos nos ha of. The LPDDR5 was therefore ready to be deployed thanks to the new DRAM drivers for the ARMs and their SoCs, so said and done.
Currently, there are two different chips made by the Korean company: 12 GB LPDDR5 D1z and 16 GB D1z, which have already been seen in the new Samsung Galaxy S21 5G; S21 5G, S21 + 5G and S21 Ultra 5G. The first thing we need to know about these new D1z chips is that Samsung wins more with them thanks to the fact that they managed to increase their manufacturing capacity by 15% compared to their predecessors, thanks to the new scanners, but what is performed other than that?
Smaller size, higher density, but the capacity limits the application
The application of EUV technology has been noted in several terms in DRAMs. First, the die size for the same lithographic process was reduced from 53.53mm2 to 43.98mm2, or what is the same, 18% space was saved in each wafer, allowing the fabrication of ‘a greater number of chips and in greater proportion.
In addition, the density has increased considerably without having to change the node per se (there is a downline from the scanner itself), a magnificent announcement that allows to go from 0.224 Gb / mm2 to 0.273 Gb / mm2. Logically if we have a smaller matrix and a higher density it is because the size of the cell must be reduced, as it is, since it goes from 0.00231 square picometre to 0.00197, modifying its D / R by 17.1 nm to 15.7 nm.
To achieve this, Samsung had to work hard, just adding an EUV mask to the process, which significantly improved the design of the cells, as well as their sharpness for the scanner’s laser, making the BLP patterns much more perfect.
The million dollar question would be, when is Samsung going to roll out its new EUV chips for the PC and server market? It will really depend on Intel and AMD in the first place. The company has overtaken Micron and is once again positioning itself as the market leader in DRAM, so we can witness a final push for DDR4 and especially GDDR6X on GPUs with this burning technique before DDR5, which should be a reality from 2022 on PC.