Micron Technology announced that it had begun volume production of 16Gb DDR4 RAM products utilizing the 1z nanometer process, which is currently the industry’s smallest feature size process node. Micron is the first DRAM company to make 16Gb 1z-class DDR4 RAM products, and the company believes this will enable it to offer “high-value solutions across a wide portfolio of end-customer applications.”
The 1z nm process node 16Gb DDR4 product delivers much higher bit density along with a slight performance boost and lower cost compared to the previous 1Y process node generation. The new node also enables a 40% reduction in power consumption compared to previous generations of 8Gb DDR4 RAM solutions.
The new process node offers increased flexibility for the new DDR4 products to be used across a wide range of applications, including artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, 5G, mobile devices, graphics, gaming, network infrastructure, and servers. However, Micron seems to prioritize data center customers who are always looking for increased performance, power consumption, and lower cost.
Micron also announced that it had begun volume shipments of the industry’s highest-capacity monolithic 16Gb low-power double data rate 4X (LPDDR4X) DRAM in UFS-based multichip packages (uMCP4). The 1z nm LPDDR4X and uMCP4 products target primarily smartphone companies who are looking for better battery life and smaller components to put into their devices.
Samsung, Micron's main competitor in the DRAM market, announced last spring that it would begin production of 1z nm 8Gb DDR4 modules in the second half of this year, in preparation for the launch of next-generation DDR5, LPDDR5, and GDDR6 memory products.
