The Memory Guy Blog – Page 2 – Jim Handy, Objective Analysis, on Semiconductor Memories

Today’s “Unprecedented” Collapses

Starting with Micron’s most recent earnings call The Memory Guy has been hearing memory executives and others use the word “Unprecedented” to describe today’s market collapse. Perhaps the strangest of these was an article in the Storage Newsletter that said that the current situation was “Unprecedented since 2008.” Given that “Unprecedented” means that nothing like this has ever happened before, that’s a pretty strange thing to say.

Being a numbers guy, I decided to see just how Continue reading “Today’s “Unprecedented” Collapses”

Emerging Memories After Optane

Now that Intel is exiting the Optane market what will happen to the market for new memory technologies? This is an interesting question that The Memory Guy has focused considerable attention over the past few years. In a nutshell, the market will continue to develop, but at a slower pace, with the bulk of revenue growth going to memories embedded into SoCs.

Even so, the market will grow significantly, with revenues reaching Continue reading “Emerging Memories After Optane”

NAND Memories Before Flash?

I wasn’t aware of any NAND memories prior to NAND flash, but recently learned that the idea wasn’t new, and other developments that enabled NAND flash were also developed before NAND flash memory was invented.

Although these ideas never reached commercial success the way that Continue reading “NAND Memories Before Flash?”

Kioxia Announces Another 30% NAND Production Cut

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”

ReRAMs find a Neuromorphic Role in Owl-Inspired Object Location

In his latest post on The Memory Guy, contributor Ron Neale reviews a novel use for ReRAM cells in which a neural processing system mimics the direction-finding mechanism of a barn owl’s ears. This is based on research performed by CEA-Leti in France, which was recently published in the journal Nature.

The potential for the use of the unique characteristics of ReRAMs, PCM and CeRAMs as brain-gates, neuromorphic devices, and in-memory computation has long been recognised.

In a paper recently published in Nature , inspired by the auditory system of the barn owl, a team from: CEA-Leti, Continue reading “ReRAMs find a Neuromorphic Role in Owl-Inspired Object Location”

New White Paper: The Future of the Data Center

The Memory Guy is pleased to announce the availability of a new Objective Analysis Brief, which is our name for a white paper. It’s called The Future of the Data Center.

The paper explores the new horizons of computing, including disaggregation, AI, IoT, etc., and explains the many different memory approaches that are being used or developed to enable these technologies, ranging from computational storage to DDR5 and CXL

Look for it at the top of the list of free documents on our White Papers page at Objective-Analysis.com.

How Do US Chips Get Into Russian Missiles?

An August 8 investigative report by Reuters revealed that many of the missiles that Russia has been raining down on Ukraine include US chip technology. The Memory Guy thought that it might be good not to simply react, but to provide some deeply considered insight into how that could have happened, and what it might mean.

The Story

Russian missiles that failed to explode in Ukraine have been examined and found Continue reading “How Do US Chips Get Into Russian Missiles?”

CeRAM: Some Significant New Insights

In this post contributor Ron Neale takes a very deep look into a new paper published by Symetrix, Cerfe Labs and university researchers which provides fresh insights to the inner workings of CeRAM (Correlated electron RAM), an innovative class of non-volatile memory, where carbon doping of nickel oxide NiO leads to a new type of electronics based electron interaction. With the recently-disclosed material as background, he then adopts the position of Devil’s Advocate to explore alternative views of the memory switching mechanism and to test the proposition that CeRAM is not simply another kind of ReRAM.

A new and recently published paper in APL Materials [1] by a team from the University of Colorado, Symetrix Corporation, Cerfe Labs, The Katholieke University Belgium, Federal University of Rio de Janerio Brazil, and the University of Colorado and more recently [2] have provided us with some important Continue reading “CeRAM: Some Significant New Insights”

Micron Investor Day: Big Plans for Tomorrow

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”

How the Chip Shortage Impacts Memories

There’s been a lot of talk in the press for over a year about the chip shortage, but this isn’t something that I have written about in The Memory Guy. My coverage of the shortage has been limited to the investor posts that I write for Smartkarma, and they’re behind a paywall. It’s about time for me to post something here.

The shortage is the reason that the world semiconductor market is constantly breaking revenue records. Since December 2020 every month has set Continue reading “How the Chip Shortage Impacts Memories”