Micron officially announced this week that its factory in Hiroshima, Japan, will have a facility to produce DRAM chips on its 1γ (1 gamma) process technology, the company’s first node using extreme ultraviolet lithography, in 2025. The company will be the first chipmaker. It plans to use EUV for mass production in Japan, and the Hiroshima and Taiwan factories will be the first sites to use the next-generation 1γ technology.
Micron, the only major DRAM manufacturer not to use extreme ultraviolet lithography, had planned to start using extreme ultraviolet lithography in 2024 on its 1γ process (3rd generation 10nm class node). However, due to the sluggish PC market and spending cuts, the company plans to use EUV in multiple layers for Micron’s 1γ process technology, but has not disclosed how many layers it will use.
What the company says is that its 1γ node will enable the world’s smallest memory cells, but that’s not the case given the fact that Micron can’t know what its competitors will be up to in 2025. It’s a bold claim.
Last year, 1 Gamma technology was in the “yield realization” stage. This means the company had extensive testing and quality control procedures to test samples of his DRAM. At this point, the company may implement innovative inspections in tools to identify defects and introduce specific improvements to specific process steps (lithography, etching, etc.) to maximize yield.
“Micron’s Hiroshima facility has been the center of development and production of industry-leading memory technologies for the past decade,” said Sanjay Melotra, Micron’s president and CEO. . “We are proud to be the first in Japan to use EUV and to develop and manufacture the 1 Gamma at our Hiroshima plant.
Micron would have to install ASML’s Twinscan NXE scanners at a cost of about $200 million per unit to manufacture memory chips at one gamma node at its Hiroshima factory.To equip the factory with advanced tools, Micron 46.5 billion yen ($320 million) in subsidies secured From the Japanese government last September. Meanwhile, Micron said it would invest 500 billion yen ($3.618 billion) in the technology “over the next few years, with the close support of the Japanese government.”
“Micron is the only company that manufactures DRAM in Japan and plays a key role in setting the pace of not only the global DRAM industry but also the developing semiconductor ecosystem,” said the director of the Commerce and Information Policy Bureau of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. said Satoshi Nohara of “We are delighted that our collaboration with Micron will take root in Hiroshima and introduce cutting-edge EUV to Japanese soil. It will also unlock exponential growth and opportunities in the digital economy.”
