Seoul, Korea, Sept. 24, 2001
hynix Semiconductor Inc. announced today that it has developed a cutting-edge processing technology to reduce die size.
This technology, code-named ‘Blue Chip’, will provide hynix with a world-class process technology that ensures competitiveness with minimal investment. At the commemoration of its second anniversary of the merger with LG Semicon at a press conference held at its headquarters in Ichon, Korea, today, hynix unveiled the 0.15-micron ‘Blue Chip’ technology, which will be deployed at all hynix fabs and thus provide manufacturing synergy.
“This new technology is a significant breakthrough that will enable us to stay ahead of competition,” said Farhad Tabrizi, vice president of worldwide memory marketing at hynix. “We are currently implementing this technology in our fabs in Ichon and Chungju, Korea, and Eugene, Oregon. We expect to be delivering 128M and 256M SDRAMs built on our 0.15-micron ‘Blue Chip’ process technology by the end of this year.”
‘Blue Chip’ – Cost Competitiveness with Minimum Investment Since the merger with LG Semicon in 1999, hynix has been working to combine the technologies of the two companies into one competitive and synergistic process. The two-year effort culminated in hynix inventing a process with ultra-fine geometry that is less than one-third the investment normally required to develop this class of technology. hynix has thus acquired state-of-the-art process technology at enormous cost savings. Soon after the merger, hynix combined the Chungju (formerly LG Semicon) 0.18-micron tungsten bit line technology with the high-speed Ichon (formerly Hyundai Electronics) DRAM technology into one production-worthy process. This paved the way for hynix to invent the basic technology for the ‘Blue Chip’, which could be used to develop future sub-micron processes. This combined technology can use existing stepper equipment, instead of new scanners, which are used to narrow circuit width. Scanners typically account for 50 percent of the investment required in fab upgrades. It is generally known that current stepper technology is limited in its ability to produce circuits with dimensions smaller than 0.18 micron.
The core of hynix’s ‘Blue Chip’ technology innovation, involves use of tungsten bit lines and utilization of existing stepper equipment. In particular, the productivity of ‘Blue Chip’ technology is 1.7 times higher than that of the legacy 0.18-micron technology. The number of chips per wafer that can be produced through this technology is 10 percent higher than competing DRAM products of like density, placing hynix in a leadership position in the DRAM market. hynix plans to further shrink this technology to 0.14-micron design rules by mid 2002.
