Samsung's 1c DRAM Yield Reportedly Exceeds 80%

According to Korean media reports, industry insiders have revealed that Samsung Electronics' 1c DRAM yield has recently reached a significant level, estimated to have exceeded 80%, achieving what is called a "mature yield." However, the industry generally believes that this cannot be directly equated with the mass production yield of HBM4.

Sources estimate that the current yield of DRAM used for Samsung's HBM4 is still below 60%. The current plan is to raise the yield of DRAM used for HBM4 to near-mature levels in the second half of this year, in order to accelerate response times to major AI customers including NVIDIA. Because HBM4 DRAM involves additional processes such as stacking, packaging, heat dissipation, and signal stability assurance, even though it is based on the same 1c process as general-purpose DRAM, its manufacturing difficulty is different.

Due to HBM4's structure of vertically stacking multiple DRAM layers for ultra-high-speed operation, its precision requirements are far higher than those of general-purpose DRAM. Even if the yield of individual chips reaches a certain level, the yield may drop again during the assembly process into the final HBM4 finished product. Although Samsung Electronics is steadily improving its 1c DRAM yield, it is difficult to guarantee that it has reached a mature level in terms of HBM4 yield.

In February of this year, Samsung announced that it had begun mass production of HBM4 and was delivering commercial products to customers. Its HBM4 delivers stable processing speeds of up to 11.7 Gbps per pin, a 46% improvement over the industry standard of 8 Gbps. Samsung expects its HBM product sales to more than triple in 2026 compared to 2025, and is actively expanding its HBM4 production capacity.