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| Seen are members of SK hynix's LPDDR5T mobile DRAM development team, provided by the company, Wednesday. From left are Kim Hyun-seung, Kim Ki-ryong, Jeong Seung-hyun, Song Kyung-guen and Cho Sun-ki. Courtesy of SK hynix |
By Baek Byung-yeul
Engineers of SK hynix said Wednesday that they were able to develop LPDDR5T, the industry's fastest mobile DRAM memory chips, because they were not satisfied with the current technology and wanted to innovate it even more.
The company announced in January that it developed Low Power Double Data Rate 5 Turbo (LPDDR5T) mobile DRAM, which operates at a data rate of 9.6 gigabits per second (Gbps), 13 percent faster than the previous generation called LPDDR5X, which was introduced in November 2022.
SK hynix pointed out that the "T" at the end of the product name refers to "turbo" as it wants to emphasize the fast data processing speed of the memory chip. The company will begin mass production of the LPDDR5T in the second half of the year.
The engineers said it was possible for them to announce the development of LPDDR5T, only about two months after it heralded the development of LPDDR5X, thanks to the desire to innovate.
"If we were satisfied with the development of LPDDR5X and did nothing, LPDDR5T would not exist," Song Kyung-guen, who manages the LPDDR5T development project, told the company's in-house newsroom. "The latest product shows our spirit of self-challenge as we tried to come up with a more advanced product even though we already developed the product with the industry's best performance and power efficiency."
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| SK hynix's LPDDR5T mobile DRAM chips / Courtesy of SK hynix |
Kim Hyun-seung said the company used a high-k metal gate (HKMG) process, which replaces the SiON gate oxide material in a DRAM chip's transistor gate with a thin high-k film.
"We have dramatically improved the performance by introducing the world's first HKMG process for mobile DRAMs. In the process, we have achieved operating speeds above the standard of 8.5 Gbps of LPDDR5X set by JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council)," Kim, who has led the development of LPDDR5X and LPDDR5T, said.
Kim added he never thought for a moment that the development team would fail.
"I didn't expect much difficulty as the operating speed of the product was already sufficient. Although a defect was caused due to the fast speed, I did not doubt that we could solve it if we worked together," he added.
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