SK hynix Inc. (or “the company”, www.skhynix.com) announced today that it has completed the development of the industry’s most advanced 1bnm, the fifth-generation of the 10nm process technology, while the company and Intel began a joint evaluation of 1bnm and validation in the Intel Data Center Certified memory program for DDR5 products targeted at Intel ® Xeon® Scalable platforms.

The move comes after SK hynix became the first in the industry to reach 1anm readiness and completed Intel’s system validation of the 1anm DDR5, the fourth-generation of the 10nm technology.

The DDR5 products provided to Intel run at the world’s fastest speed of 6.4Gbps (Gigabits per second), representing a 33% improvement in data processing speed compared with test-run products in early days of DDR5 development1.

1 DDR5 products for test run in early days of development ran at 4.8Gbps, while the maximum speed of DDR5 stipulated in the JEDEC standards is 8.8Gbps

Besides, with the adoption of high-K metal gate2 process, the 1bnm DDR5 products reduce power consumption by over 20% than 1anm DDR5 products.

2 HKMG process: A next-generation process that uses a high dielectric constant (K) material in the insulating film of the DRAM transistor to prevent leakage current and improve capacitance. It reduces power consumption, while increasing speed. SK hynix introduced the world’s first HKMG process for mobile DRAM in November and adopted the technology for its 9.6Gbps LPDDR5T mobile DRAM in January 2023

SK hynix emphasized that the development of the latest 1bnm technology will enable the company to provide its global customers with DRAM products that offer both high-performance and performance per watt3.

3 Performance per watt: an indicator of how much computation is performed per watt of power consumed

“SK hynix expects the validation process of the 1bnm DDR5 product with Intel to go smoothly following a successful validation of our 1anm server DDR5 product compatibility with the 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors,” Jonghwan Kim, Head of DRAM Development at SK hynix, said.

“Amid growing expectations that the memory market will start to recover from the second half, we believe our industry-leading DRAM technology, proven again through mass production of the 1bnm process this time, will help us improve earnings from the second half,” Kim said, adding that the 1bnm process will be adopted for a wider range of products such as LPDDR5T and HBM3E4 in the first half of 2024.

4 HBM3E (HBM3 Extended): HBM3E is the 5th generation High Bandwidth Memory product, succeeding the previous generations HBM, HBM2, HBM2E and HBM3. SK hynix plans to prepare samples of HBM3E product that runs at 8Gbps data processing speed by the second half and begin mass production in 2024

Intel Vice President of Memory and IO Technologies, Dr. Dimitrios Ziakas said, “Intel has been collaborating with the memory industry to ensure compatibility of DDR5 memory on Intel® Xeon® Scalable platform. SK hynix 1bnm is the first of its generation being targeted for the next Intel® Xeon® Scalable platform” and the Intel Data Center Certified memory program.

Meanwhile, SK hynix also said that additional validation processes to apply its 1anm DDR5, of which the first compatibility test has been already completed, onto the next generation of Intel® Xeon® Scalable platform are also underway.

<History of SK hynix’s developments & accomplishments of DDR5 products>
Industry’s first launch of DDR5 in October 2020
Industry’s first shipment of 24Gb DDR5 samples in December 2021
Industry’s first to get Intel’s validation for server 1anm DDR5 in January 2023
Industry’s first provision of samples of server 1bnm DDR5 to Intel in April 2023