Memory Manufacturers - The Memory Guy Blog

Rambus and Micron Sign License Agreement

The following is excerpted from an Objective Analysis Alert that can be downloaded from the company’s website.

Rambus and Micron announced on Tuesday that they have signed a patent cross license agreement. Micron receives rights to Rambus IC patents, including memories. Both Micron and Elpida products will be covered. The companies have thus settled all outstanding patent and antitrust claims in their 13-year court battle.

Micron will make royalty payments to Rambus of up to $10 million per quarter over the next seven years, totaling $280 million, after which Micron will receive a perpetual, paid-up license.

Rambus and Micron both have Continue reading “Rambus and Micron Sign License Agreement”

Micron Announces Processor-In-Memory

During the Supercomputing Conference in Denver today Micron Technology announced its new twist on processing: A DRAM chip with an array of built-in processors.

Dubbed: “The Automata Processor” this chip harnesses the inherent internal parallelism of DRAM chips to support a parallel data path of about 50,000 signals to attain processor-DRAM bandwidth that can only be dreamed of using conventional DRAM interfaces. The processor is a Graph-Oriented architecture.

The chip lends itself to Continue reading “Micron Announces Processor-In-Memory”

Hynix Recovery – Not so Soon?

During SK hynix’ October 29 earnings call the company further clarified the status of its Wuxi fab line that was hit by a fire on September 4. In brief, the company may miss its expected end-November date to recover to full operation.

Interestingly, although DRAM bit shipments declined by 2% because of the fire, revenues increased by 3% thanks to price increases caused by the resulting tight DRAM supply. This gave the company a revenue boost taking total semiconductor revenues from ₩3.93 trillion ($3.54B US) in the second quarter to ₩4.08 trillion ($3.66B US) in the third quarter. Not only was this revenue a record number for SK hynix, but margins also reached a record high.

All in all, it was a very good quarter, despite the fire, and perhaps because of it.

The company disclosed that restoration of the air ventilation system and the clean room have been Continue reading “Hynix Recovery – Not so Soon?”

Hynix Squeaks Out Another Update

In its own uniquely minimalistic style, Hynix has updated the status of the second line of its Wuxi fab, the one that was hit by a fire on September 4:

We would like to provide the following update on the recovery status of SK Hynix Wuxi fab that was affected by the fire on Wednesday September 4, 2013. The air ventilation system and cleanroom in the line that was affected by the fire have now been substantially restored, and we have resumed partial utilization in this line from Thursday October 10, 2013. We will gradually raise utilization and make every effort to recover normalized level of pre-fire utilization in November as planned.

This statement should put to rest Continue reading “Hynix Squeaks Out Another Update”

Micron Samples Hybrid Memory Cube

Today Micron Technology announced that it is sampling the Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) a DRAM packaging technology that it has been working on with the HMC Consortium.

Micron has been pushing to rapidly advance the HMC’s development and seems to have reached this point in an impressively brief time, given the complexity of the technology. It has only been two years since the first public appearance of the HMC at the 2011 Intel Developer Forum.

Some pretty advanced technology was used to make this product. DRAM processes are not very good at Continue reading “Micron Samples Hybrid Memory Cube”

Samsung Announces 3D NAND Production

Samsung has announced production of its 3D NAND technology. This approach, first introduced by Toshiba in 2007, allows NAND flash makers to achieve more bits per chip by building NAND strings, which normally run across the surface of the chip, as vertical stacks.

It’s a fascinating technology, since it harnesses exotic steps invented by DRAM makers in the 1990s to get over scaling problems in that technology. At the time DRAM had to go vertical to follow Moore’s Law and there were two schools of vertical DRAM: Stacked Capacitor, and Trench Cell. The stacked capacitor camp layered polysilicon and silicon dioxide into layers to form a vertical capacitor. The trench camp etched a very narrow and deep hole into the silicon and lined it with the capacitor plates. Both worked very well, but over time the trench makers have Continue reading “Samsung Announces 3D NAND Production”

Crossbar’s Radical New Memory Technology

Crossbar, Inc. has come out of stealth mode with a fascinating new alternative memory technology. Furthermore, the company says that a working memory array has been produced at a commercial fab.

Crossbar says that the technology can put a terabyte onto a single chip. The company has already measured filaments as thin as 6nm, and is confident that it can be shrunk further and that it will support multilevel cells.

Crossbar’s device is a silver filament ReRAM with a difference. For one, the silver filaments are in standard silicon dioxide, probably the most Continue reading “Crossbar’s Radical New Memory Technology”

Micron NAND Reaches 16nm

Micron has announced that it is sampling a new 128Gb NAND flash chip based upon a 16nm process, with production slated for the fourth quarter. To The Memory Guy’s knowledge this is the tightest process available.

The company, with its partner Intel, gained a lead with its 20nm process generation through its use of a Hi-k tunnel dielectric, a new material that replaces more conventional silicon dioxide layer with a new material (Micron won’t say what) that yields the same capacitance with a thinner layer. This has become very important with today’s tight processes because of issues of inter-cell interference.

Other NAND makers are migrating to Continue reading “Micron NAND Reaches 16nm”

SanDisk & Toshiba to Add NAND Capacity

SanDisk today announced that its joint venture with Toshiba would begin construction in August of its Fab 5 “phase two” shell. Completion of this Yokkaichi, Japan wafer fabrication facility is slated for mid-2014.

SanDisk expects to use this facility for technology transitions of existing Yokkaichi wafer capacity. The new clean room will provide the space for the additional equipment necessary to transition existing wafer capacity to next-generation 2D NAND technologies and to early generations of 3D NAND technology. In this way it will perform support for Fab 3, Fab 4 and phase one of Fab 5.

This is consistent with the JV’s use of Continue reading “SanDisk & Toshiba to Add NAND Capacity”

Why Most NAND Rankings Ignore SanDisk

Every so often I run into someone who asks about the discrepancy between various analysts’ NAND market share rankings and SanDisk’s shipments. After all, SanDisk is a leading producer of flash memory and has captive manufacture through its joint venture with Toshiba. Yet, most market share rankings leave SanDisk out.

What’s going on here?

Owing to a long-standing convention SanDisk’s NAND chips aren’t counted since they are sold as “Systems” (with a controller.) The World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) set that rule up, and most analysts Continue reading “Why Most NAND Rankings Ignore SanDisk”