Samsung is working on third-generation 10nm-class DDR4

Samsung announces the third generation of its 10nm class DDR4 memory. The South Korean tech giant is going to make eight gigabit chips on the improved 1z-nm process. Mass production starts in the second half of the year; in 2020 the chips will be in PCs.

Samsung is not yet mentioning the improvements of the new 1z-nm memory over the second generation, known as 1y-nm. The mass production of the second generation started at the end of 2017 and at the time produced faster and more economical memory chips. The same probably applies to the new 1z-nm generation, but Samsung only says that production will be twenty percent more efficient. This is due to a further reduction of the process; Samsung claims it is the smallest process for memory production to date.

With 10nm class, Samsung refers to chips made on nodes between 10 and 19nm. Samsung made the first DDR4 memory in this class in 2016. The capacity of the memory chips remains the same at 8Gbit as that of the first and second generation. With such chips, ddr4 memory modules of 128 GB can be made.

According to Samsung, mass production of the new memory will start in the second half of this year and that means that the memory chips will be found in servers and high-end PCs from next year. Samsung also states that the production of DDR4 memory on the improved process is a prelude to the arrival of newer and faster memory, such as ddr5, hbm2, lpddr5 and gddr6.