Severe oversupply has resulted in steep price drops in 2008, forcing the swift retirement of 8-inch DRAM capacity and pushing forward to the 12-inch capacity in order to lower the DRAM production costs by major manufacturers. In 2009 it is widely expected that most manufacturers will migrate from 60- and 70-nm devices to more advanced 50-nm devices.
Samsung and Hynix, two of the industry’s DRAM leaders, have already begun migrating their production of major products to the 50-nm class process node. Latest analysis on both 1-Gbit DDR2 SDRAM parts from Samsung and Hynix revealed very interesting trends from the two Korean rivals.
The two 1-Gbit DDR2 SDRAM devices that Semiconductor Insights (SI) has analyzed (shown in Figure 1) are from the 50-nm class process node. The analysis confirmed that the process node of the Samsung device is 58 nm; SI confirmed this by measuring multiple wordline and bitline pitches using cross sections obtained via a scanning electron microscope (SEM). The same measurement techniques were used to determine the process node of the Hynix device as 54nm.
