{"id":3981,"date":"2021-03-22T00:00:04","date_gmt":"2021-03-22T00:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/sk-hynix-ceo-seok-hee-lee-talks-about-the-future-of-memory-semiconductor-and-sk-hynixs-management-strategy\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T15:01:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T06:01:30","slug":"sk-hynix-ceo-seok-hee-lee-talks-about-the-future-of-memory-semiconductor-and-sk-hynixs-management-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.skhynix.com\/en\/sk-hynix-ceo-seok-hee-lee-talks-about-the-future-of-memory-semiconductor-and-sk-hynixs-management-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"SK hynix CEO Seok-hee Lee Talks about the Future of Semiconductor Memory and SK hynix\u2019s Management Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\u00b7 CEO Seok-hee Lee introduces SK hynix\u2019s Financial Story at the IEEE IRPS keynote speech<\/strong>
\n\u00b7 To respond to industrial changes with the scaling, social, and smart values and pursue a better future through boundless cooperation<\/strong>
\n\u00b7 Jin Kook Kim, Head of R&D, and Seon Yong Cha, Head of DRAM Development also explain Financial Story at major forums<\/strong><\/div>\n

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Top executives of SK hynix including CEO Seok-hee Lee set out to actively promote the company\u2019s Financial Story* <\/sup>.<\/p>\n

On March 22 (Korea Standard Time), CEO Seok-hee Lee gave a keynote speech to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS) and shared with the industry experts the Financial Story pursued by SK hynix. For 59 years, IEEE IRPS (https:\/\/irps.org\/) has been the prestigious premiere conference for engineers and scientists in the microelectronics field such as semiconductors, communications and systems from the United States, Europe, Asia, and all other parts of the world to present new and original work in the areas of reliability.<\/p>\n

CEO Seok-hee Lee, who has received the Distinctive Exemplary Industry Leader Award for 2020 from the IEEE Consumer Technology Society (CTSoc) in January, gave a keynote speech on the theme of \u201cMemory\u2019s Journey towards the Future Information & Communications Technology World\u201d. In this keynote speech delivered in a video, CEO Lee presented prospects on the future of semiconductors amid the upcoming changes in the ICT industry. He also announced SK hynix\u2019s strong will to develop technologies considering the scaling, social, and smart values to pursue both economic value (EV) and social value (SV) at the same time for a better ICT world.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSemiconductor Memory is the Center of the Future ICT World and We Will Make a Better World through Advanced Technology\u201d<\/h3>\n
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CEO Seok-hee Lee began his keynote speech by introducing the accelerated digital transformation of the 4th Industrial Revolution due to COVID-19. As non-face-to-face activities including ICT-based remote education and telecommuting have become a large part of everyday life, the use of data has rapidly increased recently.* <\/sup> In particular, with the advances in new technologies such as 5G, autonomous vehicles, and artificial intelligence (AI), the amount of data generated and consumed in real-time is showing an explosive increase. Accordingly, the global data center market continues to grow and the demand for DRAM and NAND, which are essential for this growth, is expected to increase significantly.* <\/sup><\/p>\n

Semiconductor Memories, which used to be simply used for servers, PCs, and mobile devices, are now expanding and diversifying in terms of their functions amid various technological innovations. CEO Lee emphasized that, for this reason, semiconductor memories will play a role beyond storing and processing information in the future, as the core of the future ICT world.<\/p>\n

Also, CEO Lee explained that achieving a high level of reliability is important to realize technological innovation suitable for the smart ICT environment in the \u201cdigital transformation of the 4th industrial revolution\u201d, while the existing semiconductor memory industry has been mainly focusing on implementing \u201chigh density, high speed, and low power\u201d to respond to various applications and customer needs so far.<\/p>\n

In addition, CEO Lee said that as now is the time for companies to take the lead in resolving pain points of the stakeholders \u2013 in other words, various social problems such as energy shortage and climate change \u2013 the semiconductor memory industry is facing the needs of times to create a better future through technology in addition to the traditional values that have been provided until now.<\/p>\n

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\u25b2 Seok-hee Lee, CEO of SK hynix, gives a keynote speech at IEEE IRPS<\/p><\/div><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u25b2 Seok-hee Lee, CEO of SK hynix, gives a keynote speech at IEEE IRPS<\/p><\/div><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u25b2 Seok-hee Lee, CEO of SK hynix, gives a keynote speech at IEEE IRPS<\/p><\/div><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u25b2 Seok-hee Lee, CEO of SK hynix, gives a keynote speech at IEEE IRPS<\/p><\/div><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Furthermore, SK hynix emphasized its will to create a better world through advanced technology by pursuing the Financial Story and encouraged all members of the semiconductor ecosystem to interest, support, and participate.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the era of fierce competition for miniaturization, the matters of technology completion and productivity were dealt with through vertical relations with suppliers. Now, however, is the time when various partners building the semiconductor industry ecosystem must form a cooperative partnership. Only by establishing a strategic partnership for Open Innovation4 based on collaboration and sharing with customers, suppliers, academia and government, we can shape a new era, which pursues both economic and social value.<\/strong><\/p>\n

SK hynix will take the initiative in enhancing the quality of our lives, solving environmental issues, and pursuing the happiness of our employees and stakeholders. We will incorporate scaling, social and smart value to the technology development to achieve the ultimate goal of making a better ICT world. We ask for your interest, support, and hopefully, your participation in pursuing social values and actively responding to the needs of the era with technology.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u201cRealizing Scaling, Social, and Smart Values is the Prerequisite for the Semiconductor Technology Development\u201d<\/h3>\n
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CEO Lee shared various management strategies that SK hynix is preparing to create a better future through technology. In particular, he highlighted that the three values of scaling value, social value, and smart value will lead the development of semiconductor technology in the era of digital transformation. He also announced plans to enhance reliability, as well as various efforts that SK hynix is making in each field.<\/p>\n

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\u201cScaling Value\u201d means satisfying the needs of industries and customers by solving the problems of innovation and reliability in materials and structures for the evolution of DRAM and NAND technologies.<\/strong><\/p>\n

CEO Lee introduced some key tasks for DRAM and NAND respectively to achieve this goal. As the key tasks, \u201covercoming the limitations of patterning in lithography, maintaining the capacitance of the cell capacitor, and lowering the resistance of the metal for interconnect\u201d were mentioned for DRAM and \u201csecuring high aspect ratio contact (HARC) etching technology, securing cell dielectric characteristics, and solving film stress issues\u201d for NAND.<\/p>\n

In the DRAM field, SK hynix has introduced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography equipment to overcome the limitation of patterning and is making great efforts to improve productivity, such as developing materials and photoresists for stable EUV patterning and defect management. Also, in order to maintain cell capacitance (Cs), the company is trying to refine the dielectric thickness, develop new materials with high dielectric constant, and innovate the cell structure. In regards to the low resistance metal for interconnect, the company is seeking next-generation electrode and insulating materials and introducing new processes. For applications that require high reliability such as automotive semiconductors, SK hynix is applying the optimized process technology to increase the tolerance to soft errors* <\/sup> and overcome this challenge.<\/p>\n

In the NAND field, SK hynix is focusing on securing etching technology to implement high aspect ratio (A\/R) to realize the high density technology required by the industry. Also, the company introduced the atomic layer deposition (ALD)* <\/sup> technology to further improve the cell property of efficiently storing electric charges and exporting them when needed, while developing technology to maintain uniform electric charges over a certain amount through the innovation of dielectric materials. In addition to this, to solve film stress issues* <\/sup>, the mechanical stress levels of films is controlled and the cell oxide-nitride (ON)* <\/sup> material is being optimized. To deal with the interference phenomenon between cells and charge loss that occur when more cells are stacked at a limited height, SK hynix developed the isolated-charge trap nitride (isolated-CTN)* <\/sup> structure to enhance reliability.<\/p>\n

CEO Lee said, \u201cWe are improving materials and design structures for technical evolution in each field of DRAM and NAND, and solving the reliability problems step by step. If the platform is innovated successfully based on this, it is possible to achieve the DRAM process below 10 nanometers (nm) and stack over 600 layers of NAND in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cSocial value\u201d means using technology to contribute to solving various social problems such as energy, disease, and environmental problems, as well as creating economic value, and fulfilling social responsibilities through this.<\/strong> It is expected that environmental problems and energy shortage problems, especially climate change, will become more serious in the future. For this reason, countries in Europe, the United States, China, and many other countries have declared the goal to achieve net-zero* <\/sup> to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which are the main causes of global warming.<\/p>\n

It is indeed difficult to improve the increasingly deteriorating global environment with the current hard disk drive (HDD)-based data storage system and power generation technologies. Accordingly, CEO Lee emphasized that the semiconductor memory industry should accelerate technological innovation to focus on solving these problems.<\/p>\n

If HDDs in data centers around the world are replaced with low-power PLC\/QLC-based solid-state drives (SSDs), greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced by approximately 41 million tons, based on business as usual (BAU)* <\/sup> estimates and this can create social values worth more than USD 3.8 billion.<\/p>\n

With the social demand to compute explosively increasing data at a high speed and low power, computing and memory systems are changing as well. Accordingly, CEO Lee explained that the memory is developing into a heterogeneous memory technology that is more specialized in a single characteristic such as speed or low power. Some of the representative memory solutions are High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM)* <\/sup> for high-speed processing, Ultra-low Power Memory (ULM)* <\/sup> that consumes much less power, and Compute Express Link (CXL)* <\/sup>, interface solution memory that is newly emerging.<\/p>\n

CEO Lee emphasized that social responsibility through semiconductor technology does not end here. He said, \u201cIf we were to follow the current path based on the current solution alone, soon, we will reach the first critical point. So, to delay reaching the critical point, convergence solutions suitable for each era should be delivered not only to greatly reduce the energy consumption in computing but also to improve the computing performance.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cSmart Value\u201d means preparing for a new, approaching era, by completing an intelligent memory solution suitable for the post-digital-transformation era.<\/strong> In the future, all devices will be integrated based on AI technology and smart ICT technology will be used in everything surrounding us. This means a hyper-connected era where all societies are connected faster with much less power through the convergence of semiconductors, AI, and telecommunication technologies.<\/p>\n

To prepare for this future, CEO Lee introduced the \u201cdisruptive innovation\u201d carried out at SK hynix at the moment and presented the direction of the evolution of memory semiconductors in the post Von Neumann era.<\/p>\n

CEO Lee predicted that semiconductor memories will develop toward a convergence of memory and logic to overcome the performance limitations, in the era of New ICT where all devices are integrated based on AI technology. This means that some of the computing functions of the central processing unit (CPU) are given to the DRAM functions. As the speed was increased in HBM by increasing the number of channels between the CPU and the memory, the speed will increase further in PNM (Processing Near Memory), where both the CPU and the memory exist within a single module. The speed will further increase in PIM (Processing In Memory), where the CPU and the memory exists within a single package. Ultimately, speed will increase further in CIM (Computing in Memory), where the CPU and the memory is integrated within in a single die, to deliver high performance computing system.<\/p>\n

In addition, CEO Lee predicted that the memory technology of the post Von Neumann computing era will evolve to neuromorphic semiconductors* <\/sup>, and storage technology into the same form as the DNA semiconductors* <\/sup>. He emphasized that ultra-high-speed computation and storage will become possible even with a small amount of energy human brain uses. Also, he stressed that it will become possible to enable a true smart world, where the same large amount of data can be stored and processed at low power in a small room without having to maintain a hundred thousand square meters of data centers.<\/p>\n

CEO Lee emphasized SK hynix\u2019s will for the future by saying, \u201cSK hynix is preparing for the future by taking the evolutionary path and the revolutionary path to respond to changes in semiconductor memories. We will continue to incorporate the value of scaling in the conventional memory, to include social value in the next generation memory and intelligent memory, and to contain the value of smart in the post von-Neumann era.\u201d<\/p>\n

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