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3D NAND: Who Will Make It and When?

(The following is an update of a post that originally ran on 13 December 2013. It was republished in 2024 as a part of a series on The Memory Guy blog to honor the 3D NAND inventors who have received the 2024 FMS Lifetime Achievement Award.)

This series, originally run in 2013, has looked at 3D NAND technology in a good deal of technical depth. At that time, the last question to be answered centered around the players and the timing that the technology would Continue reading “3D NAND: Who Will Make It and When?”

3D NAND’s Impact on the Equipment Market

(The following is an update of a post that originally ran on 6 December 2013. It was republished in 2024 as a part of a series on The Memory Guy blog to honor the 3D NAND inventors who have received the 2024 FMS Lifetime Achievement Award.)

A very unusual side effect of the move to 3D NAND was Continue reading “3D NAND’s Impact on the Equipment Market”

How Do You Erase and Program 3D NAND?

(The following is an update of a post that originally ran on 29 November 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.)

Some of my readers have asked: “How is 3D NAND Continue reading “How Do You Erase and Program 3D NAND?”

3D NAND: Benefits of Charge Traps over Floating Gates

(The following is an update of a post that originally ran on 22 November 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 prior post in this series (3D NAND: Making a Vertical String) discussed the difficulties of Continue reading “3D NAND: Benefits of Charge Traps over Floating Gates”

What is a 3D NAND?

(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?”

Why Do We Need 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?”

What is 3D NAND? Why do we need it? How do they make it?

Back in 2013, when Samsung announced its V-NAND, the first production 3D NAND, The Memory Guy blog carried a series of posts to explain the new technology and the reason it was so necessary.

Now that the inventors of this technology have been honored with the FMS Lifetime Achievement Award, I decided that it was time to refresh that series of blog posts. Once a week for the next nine weeks I will be reissuing a post in this series. I hope that these will Continue reading “What is 3D NAND? Why do we need it? How do they make it?”

Video: What’s Driving Tomorrow’s Semiconductors?

In early February the Samsung Strategy & Innovation Center asked for The Memory Guy to present an outlook for semiconductors as a part of the company’s Samsung Forum series.

Samsung kindly posted a video of this presentation on-line for anyone to watch.

Naturally, the presentation is memory-focused since it consists of the Memory Guy presenting to the world’s leading memory chip supplier. Still, it also covers total semiconductor revenues and demand drivers for future non-memory technologies, as well as memory chips.

During the presentation I explained that the next few years will bring semiconductors into new applications while chips will maintain their strength in existing markets. I showed how semiconductor demand doesn’t change much over time, but that the real swing factor in chip revenues is Continue reading “Video: What’s Driving Tomorrow’s Semiconductors?”

Where is Micron’s QuantX?

For more than a year The Memory Guy has been fielding questions about Micron’s QuantX products.

First announced at the 2016 Flash Memory Summit, this brand name has been assigned to Micron SSDs and DIMMs that use the Intel/Micron 3D XPoint Memory. Originally QuantX products were scheduled to ship in 2017, but Micron is currently projecting availability in 2019. My clients wonder why there have been these delays, and why Micron is not more actively marketing this product.

The simple answer is that it doesn’t make financial sense for Micron to ship these products at this time.

Within two weeks of the first announcement of 3D XPoint Memory, at the 2015 Flash Memory Summit, I knew and explained that the technology would take two years or more to reach manufacturing cost parity with DRAM, even though Intel and Micron loudly proclaimed that it was ten times denser than DRAM. This density advantage should eventually allow XPoint manufacturing costs to drop below DRAM costs, but any new technology, and even old technologies that are in low-volume production, suffer a decided scale disadvantage against DRAM, which sells close Continue reading “Where is Micron’s QuantX?”

Memory Market Falling, as Predicted

It’s earnings call season, and we have heard of a slowing DRAM market and NAND flash price declines from Micron, SK hynix, Intel, and now Samsung. DRAM prices have stopped increasing, and that can be viewed as a precursor to a price decline.

Samsung’s 31 October, 2018 3Q18 earnings call vindicated Objective Analysis‘ forecast for a 2H18 downturn in memories that will take the rest of the semiconductor market with it.

Those familiar with our forecast know that for a few years we have been predicting a downturn in the second half of this year as NAND flash prices fall, followed by a DRAM price collapse. After the DRAM collapse the rest of the semiconductor market will undergo a downturn.

We’ve been calling for this downturn for some time. Dan Hutcheson at VLSI Research has been videotaping our forecast every December for the past Continue reading “Memory Market Falling, as Predicted”