Inotera recently announced earnings and posted an impressive 55% gross margin. Inotera is a pure-play DRAM maker, so it’s not too difficult to estimate the company’s process geometries based on its financials.
The Memory Guy thought it might be interesting to determine what I could from the 55% gross margin number.
First of all we can estimate Inotera’s manufacturing cost/GB based on the gross margin and an assumption about the company’s sales price/GB. The WSTS price per gigabyte for November was $7.83. Assuming that Inotera’s ASP was equal to this number, then at a gross margin of 55% the company’s cost/GB would have been $3.52.
Inotera’s acts as a foundry for Micron Technoogy. If Inotera sold to Micron at some lower price, then Inotera’s production costs would necessarily be proportionally lower to maintain the same gross margin.
Using the WSTS price: At a processed wafer cost of $1,600 (my rule of thumb) a $3.52/GB cost would require 454 8Gb dice to be produced Continue reading “Backing Out DRAM Process Rules”