Toshiba to boost flash chip output
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Toshiba Corp says it plans to boost output capacity for flash memory chips at a plant in central Japan by 7.5 percent to meet robust demand from digital camera and mobile phone makers.
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Scientists have developed an alloy they say can be used to create memory chips more than 500 times as fast as todayÂs flash chips.
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(InfoWorld) - Toshiba on Thursday revealed a new high-performance chip aimed at multimedia applications such as video processing in consumer devices. The new chip, called SpursEngine, uses cores derived from theÂ Cell microprocessor, which was developed with Sony and IBM. Toshiba plans to show off the capabilities of the new chip in laptop PCs to be unveiled at the CEATEC Japan 2007 technology trade show at Makuhari Messe, which starts Oct. 2. The company will demonstrate the stream processor's capabilities in 3D image processing and manipulation. In rendering changes to an image of a face, the chip can immediately transform hair styles, make-up, and change facial expressions, position and angle in video and render the changes as computer graphics, Toshiba said in a statement. The SpursEngine works alongside a microprocessor to process video streams, recognize and process images, and tackle other multimedia chores. The multicore chip uses Toshiba's own image processing technology. The prototype of the SpursEngine operates at 1.5GHz and consumes 10 to 20 watts of power. It usesÂ Rambus' XDR DRAM memoryÂ due to high data transfer rates required by multimedia applications.The company plans to market SpursEngine after the CEATEC trade show finishes. Toshiba has already started developing products using the processors, and will sell the chips to other companies for use in their products as well. Development of the Cell microprocessor architecture started early this decade to create a new processor with expanded multimedia processing capabilities. Its first major commercial success was inÂ Sony's PlayStation 3Â game console.
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Toshiba has become the third company manufacturing FPGAs for Xilinx, adding to long-term partner UMC and IBM. The firms have already tested functional silicon at 90nm from Toshiba&#39;s 300mm fab in Oita, Japan.
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Flash-beater less than a year away? Intel could begin punching out Flash-busting phase-change memory chips by the end of the year, the processor giant has announced. Its customers could get sample 128Mb chips as early as Q1 2008, it added.â¦
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By Kyodo News International, Tokyo  Sep. 15--TOKYO -- Toshiba Corp. said Friday it has settled all  outstanding litigation related to flash memory products with Micron Technology  Inc.
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The Motley Fool - Today's flash memory chips store as many as 32 billion bits on a single chip. It's an impressive achievement, but manufacturers only have a few more years of squeezing those components into ever-smaller configurations before the whole process becomes either too expensive or physically impossible. That's why today's news from IBM (NYSE: IBM - News), Macronix (Nasdaq: MXIC - News), and Qimonda (NYSE: QI - News), announcing the creation of a new "phase-change" material that could lead to the development of more powerful memory chips, is a big deal.
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Just five months after it announced the production of the first Secure Digital memory cards in 4GB capacity at Class 4 speed, Toshiba is pushing the envelope even further today with the announcement of an 8GB flash memory card in exactly the same form factor.
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InfoWorld - Breaking the speed barrier of traditional flash memory, Intel and Micron Thursday announced a new flash memory architecture that increases the data transfer rates in consumer electronics by cutting the bottlenecks affecting conventional NAND flash memory.
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A new semiconductor alloy jointly developed by IBM and its partners will spur the development of faster and smaller memory chips. The companies say the advancements would lead to smaller chips than currently possible with flash memory.
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com September 27, 2004, 2:20 PM PT. Toshiba on Monday announced in Japan that it&#39;s upping the song capacity of its Gigabeat line of hard drive-based digital audio players.
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Japanese electronics group Toshiba Corp  posted a 38.4 percent rise in quarterly operating profit on Monday, thanks to strong sales of its flash memory chips, and it raised its full-year outlook closer to market estimates.
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(InfoWorld) - Flash memory stick makers are showing off USB (Universal Serial Bus) drives at Computex that have been certified to work with Windows Vista's ReadyBoot and ReadyBoost functions, which improve boot-up times and the software start-up speeds in PCs. The certification has been done to ensure users know exactly which flash devices they can use for the function, although it's not necessary. Windows Vista can scan any USB flash device and determine on its own if the device is fast enough and has the correct capacity to work with ReadyBoot and ReadyBoost. The idea is the same asÂ Intel's Robson technology, except that the flash memory sticks are external devices, while Robson is built inside a laptop PC. "It's not as fast as Robson," said Dave Lee, product manager for flash memory at Kingston Technology. Still, the flash sticks work faster and better than the hard drive for users who don't have Robson in their laptops. Robson is a relatively new technology for laptop PCs, so users with older models can use flash sticks instead. Microsoft is also offering to certify other forms of flash memory, including SD cards and CompactFlash for ReadyBoost and ReadyBoot. Initially, users need to set up their system to draw on the external flash drive for the speedier boot-up and software launch, said Lee. Flash devices with a Vista-certified logo from Microsoft ensures it works with the OS. Kingston is showing several devices that have been certified within the past month, as is SanDiskÂ and A-Data Technology.
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MUNICH, Germany  - Fujitsu-Siemens Computers will  start selling laptops with flash memory instead of hard drives  this summer, bringing faster, lighter and more energy-efficient  computers to the European mass market.
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(InfoWorld) - The Cell processor sits at the heart of a high-performance computer from IBM and the PlayStation 3,Â and now Toshiba Corp. wants to put that power into mobile devices and cell phones. A roadmap for the processor on display by Toshiba at this week's Ceatec show in Japan shows a more powerful version of the chip under development for 2007. While details of the chip were not available, a source close to Toshiba said that the new device will be manufactured using more advanced 65-nanometer production technology. The current chips are being made on a 90-nanometer line and the switch will mean lower power consumption and increased performance. Looking further ahead the roadmap calls for further increases in power between next year and the end of the decade. At the same time "mid-class" versions of the processor are also envisaged for 2008 and beyond and a mobile version in 2010. The Cell chip is the product of a joint development project by Toshiba, IBM, Sony Corp. and Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI). Each chip contains a main processor and eight sub-processors to deliver about 200G Flops (floating point operations per second) of power. It will make its consumer debut next month when SCEI puts the PlayStation 3 on sale in Japan and the U.S. but Toshiba has plans for the chip in other parts of the living room. "As the first application we are focused on the consumer electronics area such as media servers or something like that but Cell itself is not restricted to that area," said Mitsuo Saito, chief fellow at Toshiba's semiconductor company and one of the key creators of the chip, in an interview at Ceatec. "Maybe other partners are going onto the very high-end. We are focusing on the low power area. One is for more mobile types of applications such as small games or some mobile phone-like systems," he said. When the Cell partners disclosed details of the chip in 2004 both Toshiba and Sony said they planned to put the device into consumer electronics products by 2006. Toshiba said its plans have been delayed but remain very much in-place while Sony said it is currently concentrating on getting the Cell into the PlayStation 3 and will look at other uses once the games console is launched. Toshiba's Saito said the three partners are also collaborating on the software side so that Cell-based software won't end up tied to specific versions of the chip. "Also, maybe the most important thing is to have collaboration, he said. "Each type of Cell has to have the same basis of software so for this purpose we are doing a lot of effort to centralize software from the very small Cell to the very large one to have a uniform world. It's our plan to expand to that kind of area. That is a very important aspect so we are collaborating together, three companies, to enhance the Cell world." Â  Additional reporting by Sumner Lemon.
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Toshiba and SanDisk will build a new state-of-the-art flash memory chip factory together starting in 2009, and will share the output from it, the companies announced Tuesday.Separately, Toshiba announced it will begin construction of two more chip factories of its own at the same time. One of the plants will be for NAND flash memory, while the second will be for other semiconductor products.The three factories will make 300-millimeter (12-inch) wafers, which can cost up to $3.6 billion each to build and equip with the latest technology. The companies did not announce the size of their investments.All three will be built in Japan. No site in Japan has yet been determined for the joint Toshiba/SanDisk factory, while the two Toshiba-only factories will be built in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture, and in Kitakami, Iwate Prefecture.Toshiba and SanDisk are just two players in a competitive NAND flash memory market. Other manufacturers include South Korea&#39;s Samsung Electronics; Japan&#39;s Elpida Memories; Taiwan&#39;s Powerchip Semiconductor, and a company jointly created by Micron and Intel of the U.S., IM Flash Technologies.The new factories will help Toshiba cement its number one ranking among NAND flash memory makers, said Wayne Chen, NAND flash analyst at DRAMeXchange Technology, which runs an online clearing house for the chips. Samsung is Toshiba&#39;s fiercest rival in NAND.The global memory chip industry is currently suffering from a production glut that has sent the prices of some memory chips down below their production costs. The glut seems set to continue, as a number of manufacturers either have new factories under construction or have announced plans for new production lines over the past several months.Toshiba&#39;s factory announcement could further depress the NAND flash market psychologically because traders may believe the glut will continue due to more factory construction, said Chen. But output from the factories won&#39;t hit the market for years, he pointed out.By targeting construction for 2009, Toshiba is signalling confidence that demand for flash memory, and NAND flash in particular, will rise to end the current glut. Production at the Toshiba-SanDisk plant will not start until 2010, according to their memorandum of understanding. The two Toshiba factories are also targeting production for 2010.The good news for users is that the massive investments will keep the price of NAND flash memory down, which should lead to larger storage capacities in digital cameras, digital music players and other consumer devices.NAND flash memory has grown in popularity over the past several years due to its ability to store songs, pictures and other data when power is shut off, as well as for its reliability in consumer devices such as Apple iPods and the iPhone. NAND manufacturers are targeting SSDs (solid-state disks) as another major product area of the future, to replace HDDs (hard disk drives). SSDs use less power than HDDs, an important difference in small devices, and are more reliable because they contain no moving parts.
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Our countdown to next week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas continues now with how impossibly cheap flash memory, coupled with lesser than expected demand for it, could lead to newer classes of flash-based devices.