SK Hynix says low-power memory will ease environmental problem 

A SK Hynix executive said on Wednesday that low-power semiconductors could help ease environmental problems.

Company executive vice president Cha Seon Yong said the company’s shift from DDR4 to DDR5 saved power worth a year of power consumption from those consumed for year by all the street lamps in South Korea.

DRAM and NAND flash increased by 10% in energy conversation per every step of technological development, Cha said.

A next-generation DRAM that further consumes less power will be developed this year, Cha said.

Demand for memory semiconductors continue to rise. Demand from data centers will double in the next five years due to rise of remote services from the COVID-19 pandemic, Cha said. The EVP said supply may not meet demand in the future.

Cha also warned of environmental problems arising from the increased power consumption from more data centers. 

Companies must develop semiconductor technology that consumers less power considering the power consumption and carbon emission from data processing, the executive said.

Cha said scaling down and stacking up in semiconductors could dramatically decrease power consumption in semiconductors. 

The executive said product such as high bandwidth memory, ultra low power memory and acceleration in memory, combined with system-on-a-chip, could reduce the distance in data transfer between memory and process, which leads to less power consumption.

High bandwidth memory uses through silicon via to stack four to eight DRAM dies. More dies stacked means less distance between processes that increases bandwidth. Cha said this can reduce power consumption.