Samsung announced a new first today. They have just shipped 1 million modules of DRAM made using EUV lithography. Extreme Ultraviolet lithography is a new process being employed in chip manufacturing. This new technique has been applied to ship their 10 nm D1a class DDR4 modules.
From Samsung:
“EUV technology reduces repetitive steps in multi-patterning and improves patterning accuracy, enabling enhanced performance and greater yields as well as shortened development time.”
For a more detailed read on this process you may want to check out this fascinating article over at Gigaphoton. Samsung’s news did not stop there. They also released a timeline starting from 2009 and topping off at a potential 2021 release of DDR5 memory.
As we can see they are firmly committed to their 10 nm node. It is slated to continue with D1a DDR5/LPDDR5 mass production. Samsung’s 10 nm class chips are not the only ones being manufactured with EUV. According to their press release it will also be applied to their 14 nm class. The plan is to ramp up production even further. A second fabrication line in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, is planned for 2nd half of 2020. With everything in motion, they expect to be able to double the production of the 4th generation D1a product lines.
EUV and other manufacturers.
They are not the only ones embracing EUV Technology. TSMC began production of their N7+ line back in October 2019. It is also being used for their N6 line and they claim a 18% higher logic density over N7. Intel recently collaborated with Engadget to release a video detailing their EUV endeavors. NVIDIA’s forthcoming Ampere GPUs are said to use Samsung’s 7nm EUV process as well. At this point AMD has not confirmed when they will be using TSMC’s N7+. It was not used for their Zen 3 line.