According to SK Hynix's official website, on August 29, SK Hynix announced that it has successfully developed the world's first 16Gb DDR5 DRAM using the sixth-generation 10nm-class (1c) process. The company plans to complete the mass production preparation for the 1c DDR5 DRAM by the end of the year and start supplying the products next year, leading the semiconductor memory market development.

It is reported that SK Hynix developed the 1c process by extending the 1b DRAM platform, which not only reduces potential errors during the process heightening but also retains high performance. Additionally, new materials have been developed and applied in some EUV processes, and the entire process has been optimized for EUV applicability to ensure cost competitiveness. Furthermore, design technology innovations in the 1c process have increased productivity by over 30% compared to the previous 1b process.

The 1c DDR5 DRAM will primarily be used in high-performance data centers, operating at a speed of 8Gbps (8 gigabits per second), which is an 11% speed improvement over the previous generation. Moreover, energy efficiency has increased by over 9%. With the rise of the AI era, data center power consumption continues to increase. SK Hynix claims that if global customers adopting SK Hynix’s 1c DRAM in their data centers, the company forecasts that electricity costs could be reduced by up to 30%.

SK Hynix emphasizes that as the generations of 10nm-class DRAM technology advance, the difficulty of the fine process increases. However, based on the highly recognized fifth-generation (1b) technology, the company has improved design completion and has broken through technical limits. SK Hynix’s DRAM development VP, Kim Jong-hwan, stated, "The 1c process technology combines top performance with cost competitiveness, and the company will apply it to the next-generation HBM1, LPDDR62, GDDR73, and other advanced DRAM product groups, thereby providing differentiated value to customers."