Flash memory market to continue growth, researcher finds
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LONDON - The mobile phone market for flash memory is becoming more competitive with the intense fight among NOR-type flash makers now expanding to include NAND-type flash producers, market researchers iSuppli Corp.
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The latest research from the company claims PC makers are accelerating their move to solid state memory, with hybrid drives being the early market entry choice.
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NAND flash chips have become popular thanks to widespread use for song storage in digital music players, including Apple Inc.'s iPod Shuffle and Nano.
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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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(InfoWorld) - Toshiba Corp. is expanding production of NAND flash memory chips faster than originally planned, the company said Monday. The company is one of the world's largest producers of flash memory chips, which are used in a wide range of consumer electronics products including digital still cameras, music players, cell phones and memory cards. At present most of Toshiba's production in its number-three chip factory is done on a manufacturing line that can make chips with features as small as 70 nanometers but in January the company began using a more advanced 56-nanometer production process. The 56-nanometer technology means chips can be made physically smaller so more fit on a wafer and made more efficient. This means the resulting chips are cheaper and use less power. Toshiba had planned to increase 56-nanometer production so it equalled half of the company's 135,000 wafer per month output by the end of this year but now Toshiba is planning to meet that point in September. The faster-than-anticipated switch to new production should make Toshiba's NAND flash more competitive on the global market. The Tokyo company also said it plans to re-equip its number-four chip fabrication facility to handle 56-nanometer production. The new building will have a clean-room production area about 40 percent bigger than the number-three factory.
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By John Markoff  Scientists at IBM and two partner companies have developed a promising material that they believe will lead to a new kind of computer memory chip capable of meeting the world's growing appetite for storing digital music, pictures and video.
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Doubles density of its chips SanDisk is ready to begin mass-production of commercial flash memory using 43 nanometer process technology. Its latest shrinkage of chip features can double the density per chip compared to the previous 56nm process.â¦
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While the two are unlikely to break off ties, failing to agree could have big implications for supply and prices of flash memory a few years from now and could even alter alignments in the $12 billion NAND microchip market.
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A new type of memory could soon be available to device makers.
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Of late, the demand for flash-based MP3 players has increased tremendously, especially with the prices coming down to acceptable levels.
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A new type of flash memory that will speed access to data stored on memory cards and mobile devices has received the support of several major phone and memory vendors.
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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.IM Flash Technologies, a joint venture between Intel and Micron, has developed an 8Gb SLC (single-level cell) high-speed NAND chip which can reach read speeds up to 200MBps and write speeds of up to 100MBps, which could mean faster data transfer between devices like solid-state drives and video cards.&quot;With the popularity of digital video cameras and video-on-demand services, high speed NAND can enable a high-definition movie to be transferred five times faster than conventional NAND,&quot; said Kirstin Bordner, a spokeswoman for Micron.Conventional NAND flash memory from Micron and other players currently transfer data at read rates of 40MBps, with write rates of about 20MBps.The speed improvements resulted from changes made to the NAND architecture and improvements in the read-write circuitry, Bordner said.This chip&#39;s architecture achieves the speed defined in the ONFI (Open NAND Flash Interface) 2.0 specification, according to Micron. Micron was one of the founders of the ONFI Working Group in 2006, and other member companies include Hynix Semiconductor, Intel, Phison Electronics, Sony and STMicroelectronics.Micron is now sampling the high-speed NAND component, with mass production expected to commence in the second half of 2008, the company said.Products based on the ONFI 2.0 specification have been under development and were expected, said Joseph Unsworth, a principal analyst at Gartner.&quot;It wasn&#39;t anything that wasn&#39;t expected. We knew that it was coming out,&quot; Unsworth said.The technology could see an immediate future for use in video and high-end photography devices that require flash memory with quick transfer speeds and reliable data retention, Unsworth said. However, it will be priced at a premium and only multimedia enthusiasts looking for high-performance flash memory would be willing buyers, Unsworth said.As prices stabilize, it will reach mainstream devices like MP3 players and digital cameras, but that could be a long time away, he said.The new flash technology from Micron and Intel could also face competition from Samsung and Toshiba, the world&#39;s top flash vendors, who combined represent 60 percent of products supplied in the NAND flash market. The two companies last year signed an agreement to share specifications to develop faster and more robust NAND interfaces, Unsworth said.While both factions will ultimately deliver high-performance flash technology to consumers, they need to unite under one banner to ease the development of high-speed flash technology. The market is split in half, and it needs one standard voice to simplify the development of flash memory for manufacturers, Unsworth said.
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Prices of 1Gbit NAND flash chips may drop about 50% to US$3-4 per chip by the end of the second quarter of 2005, as supply increases and players continue to push higher-density products into the market, according to sources with IC distributors in Taiwan.
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Blog: Flash memory companies will be scrambling to fill orders the rest of this year with 25 percent of NAND capacity allocated to Apple, according to a market research firm.
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Samsung is producing a flash memory-based solid-state disk drive for mobile computing applications.
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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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Seven of the world&#39;s top mobile phone technology companies are backing the development of a new flash memory standard to be used in mobile phones, digital cameras and other consumer electronics devices.