The Memory Guy recently had a rare opportunity of a private fab tour at the Monolithastery, a memory fab in Saint Gobain Pont-à-Mousson, France. This facility combines a very traditional monastery with a semiconductor wafer fabrication plant. It’s the only such Continue reading “Visit to a Monolithastery”
Today Gordon Moore, a figurehead in the semiconductor industry, passed away at 94 years of age. He will be sorely missed by the semiconductor industry.
Moore, the namesake of Moore’s Law, cofounded both Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel Corporation. He was an unassuming genius and visionary who, as a part of Intel’s leadership triumvirate in the company’s main growth phase, provided Continue reading “In Memoriam: Gordon Moore”
[Post updated 14 Feb. with Kioxia data, a margin chart, and to correct an error.]
The quarterly results of most memory companies have been reported, and revenues, gigabyte shipments, and prices are all down. Most of the profits have been taken out of the business.
This is not an unusual situation for Continue reading “Memory Market Down, but a Turnaround is Coming”
On Friday 30 September 2022 Kioxia announced a 30% NAND flash wafer production cut in response to worsening market conditions. Kioxia’s manufacturing partner, Western Digital (WDC), decided not to comment on the Kioxia announcement.
If Kioxia’s announcement sounds familiar to you that’s because the company made the exact same Continue reading “Kioxia Announces Another 30% NAND Production Cut”
During Micron’s May 12 Investor Day Conference the company presented a number of new memory technologies and one compelling new business strategy that The Memory Guy thought were worth sharing. The audience learned of yet-another planar DRAM process node, Micron’s layer count for its next-generation NAND, how a portion of its proprietary SSD controller has been absorbed into the NAND chips, and finally Continue reading “Micron Investor Day: Big Plans for Tomorrow”
Western Digital today shared an update on the material contamination that impacted the joint-venture manufacturing facilities that the company shares with Kioxia.
Although the company increased its estimate of the loss from 6.5 exabytes to 7 exabytes, this number is still in the realm of 3.5% of WDC’s annual NAND flash shipments. It represents about two Continue reading “WDC Issues Contamination Update”
This week Objective Analysis has introduced five briefs that fall into three categories: Business strategies (Samsung, Kioxia, and Intel), government policy (US against SMIC), and world events (COVID).
In case you’re just learning about the Objective Analysis “Brief” format, the Brief is a short white paper used to make a Continue reading “New Briefs: Strategy, Policy, & World Events”
With this week’s release of five more new Briefs, Objective Analysis is now a little more than halfway through the current wave of releases. If you look through the Briefs listed on the Objective Analysis website you’ll find that they cover a diverse range of important semiconductor issues.
This week’s lineup covers the end of Continue reading “New Briefs Cover Diverse Subjects”
Today, Groundhog’s Day, Objective Analysis is publishing another five of our Objective Analysis Briefs, rounding out 2022’s total of new documents to 20. This week’s set covers even a more diverse range than those that we published in the past three weeks, with no overlap between any two Briefs’ subjects. They range from forecast methodology and China’s semiconductor efforts to critically considering Continue reading “Five More New Briefs Published”
This week’s newly-published Objective Analysis Briefs have just been released. These five cover business strategies (Intel, WDC, and Everspin), policy issues, and quantum computing – quite a variety! Each is derived from one of our most interesting and timeless “Insights” published on membership website Smartkarma. Now Objective Analysis is making these studies available to Continue reading “This Week’s Round of Objective Analysis Briefs”
