Samsung starts mass producing 10-nm class DRAM

Samsung Electronics has ushered in an era of mass produced 10-nanometer class dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips. Analysts in the electronics industry in and outside Korea say that Samsung has widened technology gap against Chinese semiconductor firms to more than five years. Chinese companies are menacingly chasing after the Korean electronics giant to narrow the gap by banking on ample support from the Chinese government.

Samsung Electronics said Tuesday it has been mass-producing 8-gigabit DDR4 (Double Data Rate 4) chips through 10-nanometer class technology (18 nano), the smallest in the world, since February this year.

One nanometer refers to one billionth of a meter, and is about one 100,000th of a human hair. The smaller the size of the memory chips that are produced, the more chips can be yielded from a single silicon wafer. Semiconductor companies in Korea and overseas have staged a fierce "nano war," because they can cut production costs with the technology.

Samsung, which produced 90-nanometer class DRAMs in 2004, reduced the scale by 10 nanometers per year, and successfully started commercial production of upper 20-nanometer class DRAMs for the first time in September 2011. The company started mass producing 25-nanometer DRAMs for the first time in the world in 2012, before applying the 20-nanometer processing technology to mobile DRAMs in October that year. Most rival companies only have reached the 25- to 30-nanometer class at present, and started mass production of lower 20-nanometer class products just recently.

Samsung Electronics plans to step up its foray into the conventional memory chip market for PCs and servers based on the 10-nanometer class DRAM products. which it has just started mass producing. The company also plans to start mass producing mobile DRAMs at the 10-nanometer class within this year in order to gain the upper hand in the ultrahigh resolution smartphone market. Over a long term, it aims to start developing "X nanometer-grade DRAMs," which will break the barrier of 10-nanometer chips, a breakthrough that is considered a mission impossible.