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China's CXMT's DDR5 reveals 3-year technology gap

Fred Chen

Moderator
China’s leading DRAM maker, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) finally revealed 16Gb DDR5 chips to the market. The Gloway 16GBx2 DDR5-6000 UDIMM (VGM5UC60C36AG-DVDYBN) consists of sixteen 16Gb DDR5 devices manufactured from CXMT. The 16Gb DDR5 chip size measures 66.99 mm2 (length 8.19 mm, width 8.18 mm, die sealed) which results in 0.239 Gb/mm2 bit density. The die has CXMT’s new and advanced G4 DRAM generation with 0.0020 µm2 cell size and 16.0 nm feature size (F). CXMT reduced DRAM cell size by 20% from the previous G3 (F=18.0nm) DRAM node. Cell pitches measure 29.8 nm, 41.7 nm, and 47.9 nm for active, wordline, and bitline (respectively), which corresponds to D1z (F: 15.8 ~ 16.2 nm) generations from Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron (DRAM Technology Roadmap).

Although the U.S. ban against China restricts the use of 18nm or smaller DRAM devices and related technology development, CXMT successfully developed and released commercial DDR5 DRAM products with advanced technology node (16.0 nm) for consumption in the domestic Chinese market.

The top three DRAM players (Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron) produce DDR5 devices with more advanced technology nodes such as D1a/D1α and D1b/D1β, having 12 to 14nm feature sizes now. Currently, 16Gb chips are the highest volume part. The top three DRAM makers started 16Gb DDR5 mass-production in 2021, which means there is now a three-year technology gap between CXMT and these vendors. However, CXMT skipped 17nm (D1y) DRAM node and jumped directly into the 16nm (D1z) node. The Chinese chip maker has been aggressively developing the next generation (sub-15 nm without EUV lithography), and HBM technology as well.

For more information, please refer to the blog in the TechInsights Disruptive Event: China Closing Memory Gap.

 
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