Plugging Information Leaks


A former SanDisk employee was arrested on suspicion of leaking proprietary information about Toshiba’s semiconductor memory to SK Hynix. What makes this particularly interesting is SanDisk is one of Toshiba’s current business partners. The two companies have a joint venture in NAND flash, which competes with South Korea’s SK Hynix. Nihon Keizai Shimbun broke the story last month. Sugi... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Jan. 28


Spintronics gains traction The field of spintronics is gaining interest. The technology could enable a new class of spin-based devices, which combine the switching speeds of logic and the non-volatility of memory. Controlling the magnetism by means of electric fields is the key for future devices, but the ability to switch ferromagnetism technology at room temperature is challenging. Helmho... » read more

What’s After 3D NAND?


By Mark LaPedus Planar NAND flash memory is on its last scaling legs, with 3D NAND set to become the successor to the ubiquitous 2D technology. Samsung Electronics, for one, already has begun shipping the industry’s first 3D NAND device, a 24-level, 128-gigabit chip. In addition, Micron and SK Hynix shortly will ship their respective 3D NAND devices. But the Toshiba-SanDisk duo are the lo... » read more

MRAM Begins To Attract Attention


By Mark LaPedus In the 1980s, there were two separate innovations that changed the landscape in a pair of related fields—nonvolatile memory and storage. In one effort, Toshiba invented the flash memory, thereby leading to NAND and NOR devices. On another front, physicists discovered the giant magnetoresistance (GMR) effect, a technology that forms the basis of hard disk drives, magnetores... » read more

Universal Memories Fall Back To Earth


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

Newer posts →