Infineon Technologies AG announced that has begun to utilise its advanced 0.11 micron process technology for volume manufacturing for DRAM products.

The first products manufactured on the new 0.11 micron technology are 256Mbit DDR components, which are used in personal computers and servers. The transition to smaller process geometries is ideal for production of high-speed memories like DDR-II and Graphics RAM. In addition the smaller feature sizes enable memory densities up to 1Gbit per chip. Infineon claims to be the first DRAM manufacturer to use the advanced 193nm lithography in volume production for its new 0.11 micron DRAM components.

Samples of high-density 256Mbit DRAMs manufactured using the new fabrication porcess have already been validated by Intel and also delivered to strategic partners.

According to Infineon, the new process results in significantly smaller structures, thus allowing a reduction in the chip size and a production cost advantage per chip of around 30% percent compared to the current volume process technology used by Infineon. This allows the memory vendor to substantially lower manufacturing costs.

The new process was developed at Infineon’s Dresden 200mm wafer facility and is now ready to start its ramp-up to volume production of high-density and high-speed memories on 200mm and 300mm process lines. During ramp-up at Dresden the new process technology will also be transferred to the other facilities of Infineon`s fab cluster, including Richmond, Virginia, the production joint venture with Nanya called Inotera Memories, and the company’s DRAM foundry partner fabs.