Samsung DDR4-3600 2nd Gen 10nm DRAM Chips Now In Production

The 8Gb DDR4 RAM is claimed to have a 30 percent productivity gain over its predecessor, while boosting performance and efficiency levels by 10 and 15 percent respectively. With regards to performance, Samsung says that its new 8Gb DDR4 DRAM chips operate at 3600 Mbps compared to 3,200 Mbps for the previous generation.

All of the advances are made possible not by a major change at the fab level, but new technology that has been incorporated into the actual chip design. Samsung says that it has implemented a "unique air space" to significant reduce parasitic capacitance, and introduced enhanced error checking to improve overall performance.

“By developing innovative technologies in DRAM circuit design and process, we have broken through what has been a major barrier for DRAM scalability,” said Gyoyoung Jin, Samsung Electronics’ President for the Memory Business. “Through a rapid ramp-up of the 2nd-generation 10nm-class DRAM, we will expand our overall 10nm-class DRAM production more aggressively, in order to accommodate strong market demand and continue to strengthen our business competitiveness.”

Samsung has already validated its second-generation 1y-nm DDR4-3600 DRAM modules with the industry's leading processor manufacturers. Moving forward, Samsung is confident that the advances that it has made with this latest generation memory will allow it to more quickly deploy DDR5, HBM3, LPDDR5 and GDDR6 products for computing devices ranging from smartphones to supercomputer (and everything in between).

The next step after 10nm will be Samsung's 8nm FinFET LPP process technology, which will result in a further 10 percent reduction in power compared to 10nm LPP (thanks to a narrower metal pitch). 8nm products have already been qualified and are ready for production, and Samsung will then adopt extreme ultra violet (EUV) technology at the 7nm level.