Samsung Electronics has decided to apply its most advanced 2-nanometer process technology to its eighth-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM5), a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) chips. The move is seen as a strategy to firmly secure a technological edge in the future HBM market.
Gu Jahum, head of technology development for the foundry business at Samsung Electronics and a vice president, said the plan in an interview with the Samsung Electronics Semiconductor Newsroom on the 27th. According to Gu, HBM5 is expected to process data more than 50% faster than HBM4E. To achieve that, the company plans to apply the latest process to the "base die," the pedestal that stacks multiple layers of DRAM, to boost both speed and power efficiency.
Samsung Electronics plans to use a 2-nanometer process based on Gate-All-Around (GAA) for HBM5. GAA is a structure in which the current channel of a transistor is surrounded on all sides by a gate to control current more precisely, enabling improvements in both performance and power efficiency over conventional designs. Samsung Electronics will also implement through-silicon vias (TSV), the fine electrodes that connect DRAM layers, at a denser pitch.
Samsung Electronics highlighted as a strength that it manufactures HBM using a turnkey (end-to-end) approach, in which one company handles everything from design and semiconductor fabrication to final packaging. It said this makes optimization easier from the design stage and can reduce product completion time and expense.
It also expressed confidence in the technology of its foundry business. Samsung Electronics succeeded in mass-producing the world's first 3-nanometer process using a GAA structure in 2022, and began mass production of its first-generation 2-nanometer process in the second half of last year. In the second half of this year, it plans to mass-produce new smartphone chips using a second-generation 2-nanometer process with improved Production yield and performance.
Gu said that based on this technological prowess, contract manufacturing orders are coming in not only from smartphone makers but also from Tesla and various AI, high-performance computing (HPC), and cloud corporations. He added that as years of mass-production experience have accumulated, the 4-nanometer process has reached a stable track in both Production yield and performance. "Samsung Foundry will continue to expand its market share based on the robust technological competitiveness of its leading-edge processes," he said.