Jim Handy – Page 2 – The Memory Guy

My Flash Memory Summit Schedule

Readers have asked when I will be speaking at the Flash Memory Summit. There will be a number of opportunities to see me there.

Before I give details, I should make sure that anyone who is unfamiliar with the show knows that this is an annual event that has grown steadily over the past 14 years to become the biggest show of its kind. It is held in the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California, in early August. This year it will be Tuesday-Thursday, August 6-8, and is preceded by the MRAM Developer Day.

Here are the details of Continue reading “My Flash Memory Summit Schedule”

Emerging Memory Report Updated

Tom Coughlin and I are proud to announce that we have released an update of our popular emerging memory report. This report, titled Emerging Memories Ramp Up, covers all leading emerging memory technologies from PCM and 3D XPoint through MRAM and ReRAM to less-known types like carbon nanotubes and polymeric FRAMs.

Anyone who makes or uses memory chips, or who is involved in this ecosystem as an investor or tool supplier needs to read and understand this study to prepare for one of the biggest changes in the history of the chip market. The report’s wealth of information will allow companies to make strategic plans to gain a competitive edge.

The report’s forecast model has determined that the emerging memory market will grow to $20 billion by 2029 largely by displacing today’s less efficient Continue reading “Emerging Memory Report Updated”

SEMICON West: See Me There

The Memory Guy will be speaking at SEMICON West. Perhaps I will meet one or more readers there.

My presentation is Monday, July 8, at 3:55-4:25 in the 2019 SEMI Market Symposium. I will be one of eight speakers who will provide our outlooks of the chip market. All of my co-presenters are well known in their fields and will doubtlessly provide valuable insights on what tomorrow has to offer.

My presentation will be a rapid-fire onslaught of valuable information proving that certain outcomes are nearly inevitable and showing how they should evolve over time.

I will specifically discuss today’s down-cycle, the end of More’s Law, semiconductor process changes, including materials and production technologies, changes in end-use architectures (and the impact they will have), the imporatance of new end markets like 5G, and geographical and political issues, especially those dealing with today’s US/China trade war.

The semiconductor industry is in the early stages of Continue reading “SEMICON West: See Me There”

Gordon Moore’s Original 1965 Article

The Memory Guy recently received a question asking where to find Gordon Moore’s famous paper on Moore’s Law. It seems that Moore’s seminal 1965 article is not very easy to find on the web.

I did a little digging myself and found a copy for ready download. It’s still good reading. The Computer History Museum gives access to the original 1965 article. This page also features a follow-up article written ten years later in 1975, and a 1995 thirty-year review of the phenomenon.

All are worth reading.

Back in 2010 I was able to attend the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in which Moore presented a keynote speech that looked back from an even more distant perspective. A little digging found this presentation on The Engineering and Technology History Wiki in the form of a script and downloadable slides. The presentation is titled “No Exponential is Forever“. Although I know that Continue reading “Gordon Moore’s Original 1965 Article”

Intel’s Optane DIMM Price Model

With Intel’s Cascade Lake rollout last month came with a co-introduction of 3D XPoint Memory in a DIMM form factor, the Optane DIMM that had been promised since the first introduction of 3D XPoint Memory in mid-2015. A lot of benchmarks were provided to make the case for using Optane DIMMs (formally known as the Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory), but not much was said about the pricing, except for assertions that significant savings were possible when Optane was used to replace some of the DRAM in a large computing system.

So… How much does it cost? Well certain technical reports in resources like Anandtech probed sales channels to see what they could find, but The Memory Guy learned that the presentations Intel made to the press in advance of the Cascade Lake rollout contained not only prices for the three Optane DIMM densities (128, 256, & 512GB), but also provided the prices of the DRAM DIMMs that they were being compared against. I’ll get to that in a moment, but first let’s wade through the fundamentals of Intel’s Optane pricing strategy to understand why Intel has needs to price it the way that it has.

In Objective Analysis’ report on 3D XPoint Memory, and in several presentations I have Continue reading “Intel’s Optane DIMM Price Model”

96-Layer NAND in Perspective: WDC Video

It’s pretty easy to go from talking about the earliest 24-layer 3D NAND to talking about the next-generation 32-layer 3D NAND, and then to progress through 48, 64, and more layers, but the amazing scale of a 96-layer part doesn’t really sink in when you just talk about numbers.

That’s why The Memory Guy was so charmed when Western Digital Corp. (WDC) invited me in for a briefing that gave me a more solid idea of how significant of a number 96 really is. The company brought along a plastic model that replicated the structure of its 96-layer BiCS NAND chip using clear plastic which was dramatically lighted from the inside.

WDC’s model was constructed using standard plastic sheeting, probably 1/8″ thick (~3mm), one sheet to represent the conductive polysilicon and one to represent the insulating silicon dioxide for each layer. Naturally, there are more than 96 layers in 96-layer NAND since there are source select transistors at the bottom and drain select transistors at the top. This adds a little bit to the layer count.

Another layer in the middle of Continue reading “96-Layer NAND in Perspective: WDC Video”

What’s Inside an Optane DIMM?

With the release of its Cascade Lake family of processors today (formally called the “2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor”) Intel disclosed more details about its Optane DIMM, which has been officially named the “Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory.” This DIMM’s architecture is surprisingly similar to an SSD, even to the point of its having error correction and encryption!

The Memory Guy doesn’t generally cover SSDs, but I do cover DIMMs, so this is one of those posts that I could have put into either of my blogs: The Memory Guy or The SSD Guy. I have decided to put it here with the hopes that it will be easier for members of the memory community to find.

The internal error correction, the encryption, and the fact that 3D XPoint Memory wears out and must use wear leveling, all cause the Optane DIMM’s critical timing path to be slower than the critical path in a DRAM DIMM, rendering the Optane DIMM unsuitable for code execution. This, and the fact that XPoint writes are slower than its reads, all help to explain why an Optane DIMM is never used as the only memory in a system: there is always a DRAM alongside the Optane DIMM to provide faster Continue reading “What’s Inside an Optane DIMM?”

MRAMs to Power Cell Phones

The Memory Guy today became aware of a significant breakthrough in magnetic memory technologies (MRAM) that could prove to be a big bonus for mobile applications. These memories could be used to generate power as well as to store data.

Scientists have only recently become aware of an oversight stemming from the fact that nearly all spin magnetics research has been performed in the northern hemisphere. Just as the water in a drain rotates counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere but clockwise in the southern hemisphere, the Coriolis Effect dictates that magnetic spin has the opposite sense above the equator as below.

This surprise finding was made when researchers from Stüdpfalz University of Blindman’s Bluff, Iowa, brought samples of an STT MRAM they had developed to the Townsville City Metropolitan University in Queensland, Australia, where researchers have been producing similar magnetic memories below the equator. Until that moment neither team had thought to question the Continue reading “MRAMs to Power Cell Phones”

Video: What’s Driving Tomorrow’s Semiconductors?

In early February the Samsung Strategy & Innovation Center asked for The Memory Guy to present an outlook for semiconductors as a part of the company’s Samsung Forum series.

Samsung kindly posted a video of this presentation on-line for anyone to watch.

Naturally, the presentation is memory-focused since it consists of the Memory Guy presenting to the world’s leading memory chip supplier. Still, it also covers total semiconductor revenues and demand drivers for future non-memory technologies, as well as memory chips.

During the presentation I explained that the next few years will bring semiconductors into new applications while chips will maintain their strength in existing markets. I showed how semiconductor demand doesn’t change much over time, but that the real swing factor in chip revenues is Continue reading “Video: What’s Driving Tomorrow’s Semiconductors?”

Forecast Videos Prove A History of Accuracy

Every year the folks at VLSI Research provide The Memory Guy with an opportunity to share the latest Objective Analysis forecast with the world. They record a 20-minute video highlighting the forecast in a conversation between me and VLSI’s chairman, Dan Hutcheson.

There are now twelve videos on the site, one for each year from 2008 to 2019. That’s quite a collection!

Over the course of each video I not only present the forecast, but also give an overview of the thinking behind it. Typically I explain the impact of high or low capital spending in prior years, but in some forecasts I explain how other issues (in particular NAND flash’s excruciating conversion from planar to 3D) can create a shortage independent of capital spending patterns.

We also go over what went right or wrong with the prior year’s forecast. Things that go wrong are generally macroeconomic issues like the Continue reading “Forecast Videos Prove A History of Accuracy”