Asia DRAM Report:Samsung Elec To Up DRAM Output Vs Flash
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SEOUL (Dow Jones)--A precipitous fall in prices for flash-memory chips and anticipated demand for next-generation DDR2 dynamic random access memory chips has spurred Samsung Electronics Co.
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A cache of flash in a new Samsung notebook hard-drive series will halve boot times and slash power usage, giving battery life a nice bump, the company says. In Gadget Lab. In Gadget Lab.
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In papers presented at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) today, IBM (NYSE: IBM) revealed a first-of-its-kind, on-chip memory technology that features the fastest access times ever recorded in eDRAM (embedded dynamic random access memory).
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But can anything support its 4MBps speed? Japanese memory card maker Elecom may have become the first company to announce a mid-speed high-capacity SD card. The company this week unveiled a 4GB SDHC product labelled Class 4, guaranteeing a data transfer rate of at least 4MBps and up to 7MBps, Elecom said.â¦
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Japanese DRAM (dynamic RAM) maker Elpida Memory and Taiwanese contract chip maker United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) plan to work together to develop phase-change memory chip products, including PRAM (phase-change RAM), joining a&#160;growing chorus of chip makers&#160;using the technology.The two companies will also work together on advanced DRAM production technology, they said in a statement late Monday.PRAM is a speedy memory chip able to retain data even when power is shut off, similar to flash memory. The chips can rewrite data 30 times faster than conventional flash memory and are expected to have at least 10 times the life span. Several companies have formed joint development ventures around PRAM, and say&#160;the chips could replace several used in gadgets today, including DRAM, NAND flash, NOR flash, and SRAM (static RAM).Elpida and UMC pledged to use their expertise in materials and high-performance manufacturing technology, respectively, to cooperate in PRAM technology development. They did not offer a time frame for when they may have PRAM products ready.So far, two companies have announced phase-change memory products that could be out within the next year. Samsung Electronics, the world&#39;s largest memory chip maker, last year unveiled a working prototype of a 512Mb chip, and expects to have the chips available in early 2008.Intel&#160;and STMicroelectronics are developing phase-change memory at their joint NOR flash venture, Numonyx.&#160;Intel demonstrated a working prototype PRAM chip&#160;earlier this year at its developer forum in Beijing.Another major group of companies,&#160;IBM, Qimonda, and Macronix International, showed off a prototype PRAM chip that runs 500 times faster than flash memory while using half as much power to write data to a memory cell late last year. The chips would be useful in small devices where battery life is a worry for users, but production technology required for the fine circuitry of the prototype chip might not be around until 2015.So far this month, two groups have made announcements surrounding phase-change memory.South Korea&#39;s Hynix Semiconductorsigned a long-term licensing agreement with phase-change memory technology developer Ovonyx, and Taiwan&#39;s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), in partnership with six Taiwanese chip makers, believe they could have a PRAM product ready within three years.&#160;
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By Bob Mims, The Salt Lake Tribune  Feb. 13--Fallout from Micron Technology Inc.'s dire price forecast for  the flash-style memory that powers everything from iPods to laptops sent its  stock and that of other semiconductor makers tumbling Monday.
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(InfoWorld) - Struggling memory chip vendors may see a ray of hope in the near future as prices for DRAMÂ chips stoppedÂ their long slideÂ during the first half of July, according to a report released Tuesday. However, that pause is likely to be brief as DRAM suppliers still have too much inventory in their warehouses, said the report from iSuppli. As vendors like SamsungÂ and Hynix SemiconductorÂ seek extra revenue by selling off those inventories, prices could drop again, said iSuppli analyst Nam Hyung Kim. Therefore, Kim upgraded his rating of the short-term DRAM market only from "negative" to "neutral," saying he is not yet ready to declare a recovery in that sector. Falling DRAM pricesÂ help keep prices low for consumer electronics like PCs, MP3 music players and digital cameras. But it puts big pressure on chip makers to find new revenue. For example, in April Samsung blamed tumbling DRAM prices for helping toÂ push its net profit down 15 percentÂ in the first quarter of 2007, compared to the same period last year. In recent years, some vendors have broken the law in that effort, leading to price-fixing convictions by the U.S. Department of Justice against Samsung and Hynix, as well as their competitors Infineon Technologies, Elpida Memory, and Mitsubishi Electric. Price collusion by DRAM vendors can also harm business computer buyers, according toÂ a lawsuit filed in May against Hynix by Sun. Sun claims the South Korean company inflated prices for its DRAM chips, leading to artificially high prices for Sun servers and storage systems. Some chip vendors are trying to improve their profits by reducing their DRAM production in favor of NAND flash, the memory technology used in popular items like Apple's iPod music players and iPhone smartphone. That transition will help to keep the DRAM market strong in the third quarter of 2007 by avoiding a surplus, Kim said. But even the NAND market will begin to droop in the second half of 2007, as memory manufacturers rush into that sector and force another price decline, he predicted.
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SAN JOSE, Calif. - South Korea&#39;s Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. on Thursday (Dec. 30) said that it has set aside a $100 million provision against a DRAM price fixing scheme that has rocked the industry, according to published reports.
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Samsung Electronics, the world's largest manufacturer of computer memory chips, said it would invest 680 billion won (647 million dollars) to expand capacity at its flash memory plant.
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(InfoWorld) - The rapid uptake of smartphones around the world has ensured the future of DRAM (dynamic RAM) in mobile handsets, where the chips are used in every unit shipped. Although it's not exactly like the version of DRAM used in PCs, it works in much the same way, and the differences are mainly in size, heat, and power consumption -- all key considerations in mobile phones, said Mueez Deen, director of Mobile DRAM and graphics memory, Samsung Semiconductor Inc. For years, DRAM makers such as Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Hynix Semiconductor Inc. have hoped to see the uptake of DRAM in mobile phones in order to win orders for the massive volume of the chips required by handsets. But standard DRAM made for computers uses too much power for mobile phones, so companies developed Mobile DRAM to take on the increasing computing power of today's smart handsets. "Any time you have a feature-rich operating system, you need to have something to hold the OS, and on top of that have more memory to hold the other functions," said Deen in a telephone interview. Mobile DRAM is currently used in about 30 percent of all mobile phones, he said, but in the future that figure will increase to almost every handset, as the devices take on more computing functions. It's a very different story from a decade ago. The main memory chips used in a mobile phone ten years ago were NOR Flash memory and SRAM (synchronous-RAM). SRAM was ideal as a low power memory chip for handsets, but manufacturers complained about its cost relative to DRAM, and many hoped to see DRAM transform into a replacement for SRAM in handsets. It's been a tough battle for DRAM makers to tweak their product for the mobile market, but the development effort did help them create chips able to use less power than standard DRAM, that takes up less space inside a handset. Deen said Mobile DRAM is completely different than DRAM, a re-design from the ground up. However, SRAM continues to hold the lion's share of the mobile phone market, mainly because most handsets being shipped today still do not host functions that require Mobile DRAM. But new products such as the iPhone are turning the tide increasingly to Mobile DRAM. Handsets that act as a PDA (personal digital assistant), or smartphones, as well as mobile devices used for e-mail, listening to music and ever more multimedia functions require more capacity and speed in a memory chip than SRAM can provide, giving Mobile DRAM a leg up. In fact, the iPod is also a major driver of Mobile DRAM growth. Digital music players require Mobile DRAM to buffer the data. Whether it's audio or video, small devices need Mobile DRAM, said Deen, although video needs even more. As time goes on, more mobile phones, even low-end handsets aimed at emerging markets, will add multimedia and PDA-like functionality, ensuring the future for Mobile DRAM, Deen said.
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(InfoWorld) - Samsung ElectronicsÂ opened a $3.5 billion memory chip factory in Austin Thursday, the biggest such plant in Texas. The world's largest memory chip maker will produce NAND flash memory, which is used to store data in a wide range of products, from digital cameras to iPods, at the facility. Production at the factory will start in the second half of this year, and the first product to be made there will be 16Gb NAND flash chips, using a 50-nanometer production process. Such new factories ensure plentiful supply for the memory chip industry, which is important for keeping prices down for users as more and more people buy consumer electronics that let them capture, share and store pictures, songs and other data. The new chip facility covers the area of nine football fields, and will reach an output of 60,000 wafers per month by 2008. Hundreds of memory chips can be made on one silicon wafer. It will be among the most advanced memory chip plants in the U.S. when it starts churning out 50-nanometer chips later this year. There are about three to six atoms in a nanometer, depending on the type of atom, and it describes the smallest size of features on a chip. Currently, 65-nanometers is considered cutting edge, though Intel makes some products using 45-nanometer technology. Samsung has hired 1,600 employees for the factory. Samsung Electronics currently operates 15 semiconductor production lines globally, including two factories in Texas.
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Has eye on media, gaming handsets Samsung yesterday said it expects gadget makers to incorporate its newly announced 'fusion' memory chip, branded OneDRAM, into handsets, portable games consoles and media players by H2 2007. They'll do it because the technology "sharply increases" data throughput speeds, the company claimed.â¦
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South Korea's Samsung Electronics has said it has developed a chip with enough capacity to store 36,000 high-resolution photographs or 40 movie files.
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(InfoWorld) - Samsung ElectronicsÂ is using a more advanced production method to push graphics memory chips to a higher speed. The company, which is one of the world's biggest chip makers, said Friday it has managed to make GDDR4 (graphics double data rate 4) memory chips that work at 4Gbps. That's two-thirds faster than the current fastest GDDR4 chips generally available, which operate at 2.4Gbps, Samsung said. It managed to make the higher speed chips by using 80 nanometer production technology. A nanometer is a millionth of a millimeter and the measurement refers to the size of the smallest feature on a chip's surface. As these sizes get smaller, chips can be made more compact, use less energy and work at higher speeds. Samsung's first 4Gbps GDDR4 memory will be a 512Mb (64MB) chip. The South Korean company will begin offering sample chips to customers this month and mass production will come later this year.
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Samsung Electronics has developed ultra-fast 1Gb OneNand Flash memory designed for next-generation mobile phones which it claims boasts a fourfold read speed increase over conventional Nand Flash performance.
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SAN JOSE, Calif. - South Korean DRAM maker Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., said Thursday (Oct. 28) that it &quot;played an integral role in the development and manufacturing&quot; of the Personal Internet Communicator (PIC), announced by Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
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SUNNYVALE, Calif., Dec. 14  /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SST (Silicon Storage Technology, Inc.), , a leader in flash memory technology, today rounded out its 1.8V low-density flash product portfolio with the announcement of a 16-Mbit Multi-Purpose Flash Plus (MPF+) device.