Samsung unveiled plans for its next-generation DRAM and memory solutions, including GDDR7, DDR5, LPDDR5X and V-NAND. Samsung Electronics, a global leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today showcased a range of cutting-edge semiconductor solutions that will drive digital transformation within a decade at Samsung Technology Day 2022. An annual conference since 2017, the event returns to the Signia by Hilton San Jose in person after three years.
This year’s event, attended by more than 800 customers and partners, brought together Samsung’s memory and system LSI business leaders – including Jung-bae Lee, president and head of the memory business, Yong-In Park, president and head of the system LSI business, and Jaeheon Jeong, executive vice president and head of the Device Solutions (DS) Americas office – to speak about the company’s s latest progress and future vision.
System LSI Business Highlights
During the morning session of this year’s Technology Day, the System LSI business highlighted its goal to become a “total solution fabless” by maximizing the synergies between its unique and broad product portfolio. As Samsung Electronics’ fabless IC design company, the System LSI business currently offers approximately 900 products, including SoCs (System on Chip), image sensors, modems, display driver ICs (DDIs), power management ICs (PMICs) and security solutions.
The System LSI business not only manufactures leading individual products but is a total solution provider that can combine various logic technologies into a single platform in order to deliver optimized solutions to customers.
“In an era where machines are required to learn and think like humans, the importance of logic chips that play the role of the brain, heart, nervous system and eyes is growing to unprecedented levels,” said Yong-In Park, president and head of the System LSI business at Samsung Electronics.” Samsung will converge and combine its technologies embedded in various products such as SoCs, sensors, DDIs and modems in order to lead the fourth industrial revolution as a total solution provider.”
The fourth industrial revolution is a key theme of the System LSI Technology Day conference. the logic chips of the System LSI business are the essential physical foundation for superintelligence, hyper-connectivity and hyper-data, all key areas of the fourth industrial revolution. Samsung Electronics goal is to increase the performance of these chips to a level where they can perform human tasks like humans.
With this vision in mind, the Systems LSI business is focusing on improving the performance of basic chips such as NPUs (neural processing units) and modems, as well as innovating CPU (central processing unit) and GPU (graphics processing unit) technologies by partnering with global industry-leading companies.
The Systems LSI business is also continuing its work on ultra-high resolution image sensors so that its chips can capture images like the human eye, and also plans to develop sensors that can function with all five human senses.
Next-generation logic chips unveiled
Samsung Electronics debuted a number of advanced logic chip technologies at its Tech Day booth, including the 5G Exynos Modem 5300, Exynos Auto V920 and QD OLED DDI, which are essential components for various industries including mobile, home appliances and automotive.
New chips released or announced this year, including the high-end mobile processor Exynos 2200, and the 200,000-pixel ISOCELL HP3 – with the industry’s smallest 0.56 micron (μm) pixel image sensor – were also on display. s pixel size is 12 percent smaller than its predecessor’s 0.64μm, allowing the camera module to reduce its surface area by approximately 20 percent, enabling smartphone manufacturers to keep their high-end devices slim.
Samsung demonstrated its ISOCELL HP3 in action, showing Tech Day attendees the quality of photos taken with a 0.2-megapixel sensor camera and demonstrating how System LSI’s fingerprint security IC for biometric payment cards works, which combines a fingerprint sensor, secure element (SE) and secure processor to add an extra layer of authentication and security to payment cards.
Memory Business Highlights
This year marked 30 and 20 years of leadership in DRAM and NAND flash memory, respectively, as Samsung released its fifth generation of 10nm-class (1b) DRAM and its eighth and ninth generations of vertical NAND (V-NAND), affirming the company’s commitment to continue delivering the most powerful portfolio of memory technologies over the next decade.
“A trillion gigabytes is the total amount of memory Samsung has produced since it began more than 40 years ago, and about half of that trillion has been produced in the past three years, which shows how quickly the digital transformation is progressing,” said Jung-bae Lee, president and head of Samsung Electronics’ memory business.” As advances in memory bandwidth, capacity and power efficiency enable new platforms, and these in turn spur more semiconductor innovation, we will increasingly drive higher levels of integration on the path to digital co-evolution.”
DRAM solutions to advance data intelligence
Samsung’s 1b-class DRAM is currently under development with mass production planned for 2023. To overcome the challenges of scaling DRAM beyond the 10nm range, the company has been developing disruptive solutions in patterning, materials and architecture, and technologies like High-K materials are well underway.
The company then highlighted upcoming DRAM solutions such as 32Gb DDR5 DRAM, 8.5Gbps LPDDR5X DRAM and 36Gbps GDDR7 DRAM that will bring new capabilities to the data center, HPC, mobile, gaming and automotive market segments.
In addition to traditional DRAM, Samsung highlighted the importance of custom DRAM solutions such as HBM-PIM, AXDIMM and CXL that can drive system-level innovation to better handle the explosive growth of global data.
Reaching more than 1,000 V-NAND layers by 2030
Since its inception a decade ago, Samsung’s V-NAND technology has evolved over eight generations, delivering 10x the number of layers and 15x the number of bits. Samsung’s latest 512Gb 8th generation V-NAND has increased bit density by 42%, reaching the industry’s highest bit density in a 512Gb triple-level cell (TLC) memory product to date. The world’s highest capacity 1Tb TLC V-NAND will be available to customers by the end of this year.
The company also noted that its ninth-generation V-NAND is under development and is scheduled for mass production in 2024. By 2030, Samsung envisions stacks of more than 1,000 layers to better support future data-intensive technologies.
As artificial intelligence and big data applications drive demand for faster and higher capacity memory, Samsung will continue to enable bit density leaps by accelerating the transition to quad-level cells (QLC), while further improving power efficiency to support more sustainable operations for customers worldwide.
