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

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


SanDisk filed a civil suit against Korea’s SK Hynix. Additionally, SanDisk has submitted a criminal complaint with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department against a former employee. These actions relate to the theft of trade secrets related to NAND flash technology by a former engineer of SanDisk who left the company in 2008 to work for SK Hynix. Cadence Design Systems and GlobalFoundrie... » read more

The Bumpy Road To 3D NAND


The NAND flash memory market is dynamic, but it’s also sometimes predictable. Suppliers tend to roll out identical NAND flash chips and then scale them to smaller geometries. And NAND chip prices rise and fall, depending on the supply/demand equation at a given point. Going forward, though, the NAND market is expected to become less predictable, if not chaotic, amid a new and major technol... » read more

Following The Yen


An examination of the installed fab capacity base in Japan shows that total capacity expansion has stalled in recent years due to the consolidation and closures of facilities. The closure and consolidation of 27 facilities between 2009 and 2012 reduced the installed fab capacity in Japan by at least 350,000 200mm equivalent wafers per month. With that said, investments continued in some industr... » 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

The Week In Review: July 8


By Mark LaPedus Fab tool vendors this week will gather at the annual Semicon West trade show in San Francisco. The mood is expected to be both gloomy and upbeat, at least based on one new and mixed forecast. The semiconductor equipment market is projected to fall 7.4% in 2013, but it will grow 27.1% in 2014, according to VLSI Research. The forecast for semis is up 10% in 2013 and 8.3% growth i... » read more

3D NAND Market Heats Up


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

NAND Enters Tough Cycle


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

What’s After NAND Flash?


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

New Entrants Seek Niches in NAND Flash Fray


By Mark LaPedus For some time, the NAND flash market has been primarily dominated by five vendors: Micron, Samsung, SanDisk, SK Hynix and Toshiba. Other vendors have been seeking to get a foothold in the exploding market — with little or no luck. Intel Corp. and Powerchip Semiconductor Corp. have separately experienced limited success in NAND. And Elpida Memory Inc. and Spansion Inc. are... » read more

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