tag: Micron

Memory Gets Smarter
By Ed Sperling - 27 Jun, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling Look inside any complex SoC these days and the wiring congestion around memory is almost astounding. While the number of features on a chip is increasing, they are all built around the same memory modules. Logic needs memory, and in a densely packed semiconductor, the wires that connect the myriad logic blocks are literally all over the memory. This is made worse by the fact ... » read more

3D NAND Market Heats Up
By Mark LaPedus - 16 May, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Mark LaPedus It’s the tale of two promising and separate 3D chip architectures. One technology is slowly taking root, while the other one is heating up. 3D stacked-die using through-silicon vias (TSVs) is on the slower path. Advanced chip-stacking has several challenges and is still a few years away from mass production. In contrast, 3D NAND is heating up, as Samsung and SK Hynix are a... » read more

Foundry Landscape Changes In 3D
By Mark LaPedus - 13 Dec, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Mark LaPedus Over the last year, leading-edge silicon foundries announced their new and respective strategies in the emerging 2.5D/3D chip arena. The ink is barely dry and now the foundry landscape is changing. One new vendor, Tezzaron Semiconductor, is entering the market. The 3D DRAM supplier plans to provide select 2.5D/3D foundry services within its recently acquired fab in Austin, T... » read more

Mobile Memory Madness
By Ed Sperling - 15 Nov, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Mark LaPedus The insatiable thirst for more bandwidth in smartphones, tablets and other devices has prompted an industry standards body to revamp its mobile memory interface roadmap. As part of the changes, the Joint Electron Devices Engineering Council (JEDEC) has scaled back the initial version of Wide I/O technology and pushed out the introduction date of a true 3D stacked architectur... » read more

Thanks For The Memories
By Ed Sperling - 27 Sep, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling The amount of real estate in a design now devoted to memories—SRAM on chip, DRAM off chip, and a few other more exotic options showing up occasionally—is a testament to the amount of data that needs to be utilized quickly in both mobile and fixed devices. Memory is almost singlehandedly responsible for the routing congestion now plaguing complex SoCs. It is one of the mai... » read more

Quiet, Steady And Sometimes Unexpected Advances For SOI
By Ed Sperling - 20 Sep, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling After years of talking about equivalent pricing, technical advantages and consistent processes, silicon on insulator finally appears to be making significant inroads—but not necessarily in ways, places, or even at process nodes where it initially was predicted to gain ground. What’s driving at least some of this change is the semiconductor industry’s progression toward ... » read more

NAND Enters Tough Cycle
By Ed Sperling - 20 Sep, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Mark LaPedus The NAND flash memory market is entering into a new and painful cycle, a period that will impact suppliers, OEMs and fab tool vendors alike. For some time, there has been an oversupply and depressed pricing in the NAND market. In mid-2011, Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix and Toshiba put on the brakes in their capital spending plans. And in recent months, NAND suppliers in total h... » read more

Universal Memories Fall Back To Earth
By Ed Sperling - 20 Sep, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Mark LaPedus Ten years ago, Intel Corp. declared that flash memory would stop scaling at 65nm, prompting the need for a new replacement technology. Thinking the end was near for flash, a number of companies began to develop various next-generation memory types, such as 3D chips, FeRAM, MRAM, phase-change memory (PCM), and ReRAM. Many of these technologies were originally billed as “uni... » read more

What Comes After FinFETs?
By Ed Sperling - 16 Aug, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Mark LaPedus The semiconductor industry is currently making a major transition from conventional planar transistors to finFETs starting at 22nm. The question is what’s next? In the lab, IBM, Intel and others have demonstrated the ability to scale finFETs down to 5nm or so. If or when finFETs runs out of steam, there are no less than 18 different next-generation candidates that could o... » read more

What’s After NAND Flash?
By Ed Sperling - 16 Aug, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Mark LaPedus For years, many have predicted the end of flash memory scaling, particularly NAND, but the technology continues to defy the odds as it moves down the process curve. Still, there are signs that the floating gate structure in today’s flash memory is on its last legs. The floating gate is seeing an undesirable reduction in the control gate to capacitive coupling ratio. And ... » read more

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