China’s DRAM semiconductor company, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), has hinted at the development of the next-generation semiconductor process technology, Gate-All-Around (GAA), attracting attention in the industry.
According to industry sources on Dec. 14, CXMT recently announced at the 69th International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in San Francisco that they have successfully implemented the GAA design, a next-generation transistor structure, in DRAM.
GAA technology, first applied by Samsung Electronics in the 3-nanometer (nm) manufacturing process, is considered a breakthrough technology overcoming the limitations of semiconductor miniaturization.
To increase the integration density, DRAM memory semiconductors are moving towards transitioning the semiconductor structure vertically within a few years. However, there are still challenges, such as performance degradation, requiring time for commercialization.
Amid this situation, China’s CXMT, a latecomer in the DRAM industry, announced their success in applying the GAA design to DRAM, achieving miniaturization of DRAM. Currently, Samsung Electronics is the only one to have commercialized GAA technology.
This development raises interest in whether China’s semiconductor industry will make another technological leap despite U.S. sanctions.
Unlike Yangtze Memory Technologies Company (YMTC), another Chinese memory semiconductor company, CXMT is not on the Entity List requiring special export permission from the U.S. Department of Commerce to purchase technology from American suppliers.
However, the U.S. Department of Commerce continues to exert regulatory pressure, including extensive equipment export controls, making it difficult for China to acquire DRAM technology below 18 nm. CXMT’s development achievement under these circumstances is noteworthy in the semiconductor industry.
CXMT clarified that “the paper only describes basic research related to the feasibility of the design and is not related to the current production process.”
Recently, CXMT developed LPDDR5, a low-power DRAM mainly used in smartphones and mobile devices, marking it as China’s first such development. Despite being released over four years later than Samsung Electronics, there is controversy over its marketability, but it is also seen as an achievement in narrowing the technological gap with the South Korean DRAM industry.