(The following is an update of a post that originally ran 25 October 2013. It was republished in 2024 as a part of a series to honor the 3D NAND inventors who have received the 2024 FMS Lifetime Achievement Award.)
In the prior post we discussed the need to go vertically into the body of the die, since NAND flash can not Continue reading “What is a 3D NAND?”
(The following is an update of a post that originally ran 18 October 2013. It was republished in 2024 as a part of a series to honor the 3D NAND inventors who have received the 2024 FMS Lifetime Achievement Award.)
A memory chip of a certain area costs about the same amount to produce, no matter how many bits it holds. Naturally, the more bits you can cram onto this chip, the cheaper the price per bit will be. Low cost is of the utmost Continue reading “Why Do We Need 3D NAND?”
In a little 3-minute video released this week for the SEMICON West conference, Applied Materials dramatizes the 3D NAND manufacturing process by using hailstorms for atomic level deposition (ALD) and lightning bolts for etch, all while explaining that the wafer’s surface reaches temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun.
For those who already understand 3D NAND manufacture it’s an interesting Continue reading “Applied Materials Video Dramatizes 3D NAND Manufacture”
With all the new emerging memories that are being developed there must be quite a number of test runs to study exactly how well these new technologies and materials can perform. If a batch of 300mm wafers must be used for a single test then the cost multiplies, particularly if no other test can be run on that wafer.
Another great difficulty is that most memory manufacturers run their wafers on very high-efficiency and high-volume wafer fabs. It is perilous and wasteful to interrupt a production process to inject a batch of test wafers. Most fab managers would rather have a tooth pulled than to change their flow to accept an experimental lot.
What can be done to improve this situation?
Well the folks at Intermolecular, Inc. (IMI) explained to the Memory Guy that they have a solution: They have built a small fab that allows single wafers to be processed with varying parameters across a single wafer. In this way one wafer can be used to run 36 or more different experiments all at the same time. This is clearly more economical than having to run the experiment on 36 wafers or, even worse, 36 batches of wafers! Intermolecular says that, while production fabs are optimized for manufacturing, their fab is optimized for materials understanding.
The firm calls itself an Continue reading “Accelerating New Memory Materials Research”
Early this month I was invited to participate in Applied Materials’ (AMAT) Analyst Day. The sessions were rich in data covering the markets that would profit the company over the next few years.
Naturally, The Memory Guy fixated on those presentations that dealt with memory. When it came to the upcoming transition to 3D NAND, AMAT had a lot to say.
A later post will explain what 3D NAND actually is. Suffice it to say that today’s approach to making NAND flash has nearly reached its limit, and the approach that manufacturers plan to use in the future involves making NAND strings that stand on their ends. This has phenomenal implications on Continue reading “Applied’s Take on 3D NAND”
