Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron have developed 1x nm memory for four to five years. Samsung has introduced EUV technology from 14nm node, and recently officially mass-produced 12nm memory.

The new RAM has a capacity of 16Gb(2GB) and a maximum speed of 7.2Gbps(equivalent frequency of 7200MHz), which is equivalent to processing two 30GB ultra HD movies per second.Power consumption is reduced by as much as 23% compared to the previous generation, while wafer productivity is increased by 20%.

What about after 12nm? Last year it was revealed that Samsung was also working on 11nm memory, but even if 11nm memory is solved, the memory industry will have to deal with the problem of how to manufacture memory below 10nm, which will require an overhaul of memory chip architecture.

South Korean media reported recently that Samsung has formed a team,Responsible for developing next-generation DRAM memory chips with 4F2 structure (product of WL and BL in the figure below, smaller number means smaller area),Compared to the current 6F2 structure,Even if the process remains the same, the area can be reduced by 30%, further improving the storage density.

According to Samsung's idea, memory chips with 4F2 architecture are expected to become the key to process nodes below 10nm, and the capacity and performance of memory chips will be further improved through the combination of process improvement and architecture improvement.

However, memory chips with 4F2 structure have been developed as early as more than 10 years ago, and manufacturers have planned to use them since the DDR3 era, but no actual progress has been made, and the manufacturing difficulty is very great.

SK Hynix is aiming for 3D DRAM memory. However, all these new technologies have high manufacturing costs and will take time to solve.