Samsung and Numonyx today announced that they will jointly develop common specifications for phase change memory (PCM). Common specifications are necessary to drive the adoption of PCM, particularly since OEMs do not want to be beholden to one supplier. The development of common specifications is analogous to what Intel and ST did in NOR flash starting with the 90nm NOR flash generation and resulted in Intel and ST being dual sourced at major OEMs.
The bit alterability of PCM make it attractive in simplifying firmware and reducing system overhead, however, adoption of PCM will likely be limited until costs approach that of flash memories. With a 45nm 1Gb PCM chip scheduled for production for the end of 2009, Numonyx will be closing the gap with NOR flash, however it'll take much longer for a new memory technology to break out of its niche status, if at all. Just take a look at where FRAM and MRAM are today.
This colloboration is the right step to facilitate the development of the infrastructure supporting PCM. Samsung's backing is a validation of the technology and also provides OEMs the confidence to commit themselves to this emerging memory technology.
Showing posts with label Samsung. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Samsung. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
Samsung and Toshiba Extend Patent Cross-licensing Agreement
Samsung and Toshiba have decided to extend their semiconductor patent cross-licensing agreement which ran from September 2002 to March 2009. No timetable was given for the new agreement but it is estimated that it will run for seven years, the same timeframe for the earlier announced Samsung-SanDisk patent cross license agreement.
As the inventor of NAND flash memory, Toshiba has the largest portfolio of NAND flash memory patents with a couple thousand patents. Despite being the No. 2 NAND flash memory supplier, Toshiba has been at the forefront of introducing new process technologies. Its super self-aligned STI process introduced in its 90nm NAND flash products were copied by other vendors in their 70nm and 60nm processes. The company was also the first to introduce new materials for the wordline and bitline in its 56nm process, the same materials which were incorporated into Samsung's 42nm process. And the company also led the transition to 64-cell NAND strings.
By signing these agreements with Toshiba and SanDisk, Samsung continues to have access to important NAND flash process technology as well as multi-level cell flash memory design IP relevant for future NAND flash generations.
As the inventor of NAND flash memory, Toshiba has the largest portfolio of NAND flash memory patents with a couple thousand patents. Despite being the No. 2 NAND flash memory supplier, Toshiba has been at the forefront of introducing new process technologies. Its super self-aligned STI process introduced in its 90nm NAND flash products were copied by other vendors in their 70nm and 60nm processes. The company was also the first to introduce new materials for the wordline and bitline in its 56nm process, the same materials which were incorporated into Samsung's 42nm process. And the company also led the transition to 64-cell NAND strings.
By signing these agreements with Toshiba and SanDisk, Samsung continues to have access to important NAND flash process technology as well as multi-level cell flash memory design IP relevant for future NAND flash generations.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Spansion Becoming an IP Company
Struggling to achieve profitability in its core business, Spansion has now turned to monetizing its portfolio of 3,000 patent and patent applications. Its first victim: Samsung. Spansion has filed two separate patent infringement claims against the company with the International Trade Commission and in the U.S. District Court in Delaware. Spansion is seeking an injunction in both cases on the sales of electronic devices containing Samsung flash memory and requesting treble damages in the Delaware claim for knowingly violating the patents.
Spansion is claiming Samsung infringed on 10 patents with four of them filed in the ITC complaint and six in the Delaware claim. The patents in question are related to NAND flash memory and include process patents describing methods of forming of the interpoly dielectric, shallow trench isolation as well as programming schemes. The patents, granted between 1998 and 2002, were filed by AMD, the pedigree of Spansion. AMD developed NAND technology and introduced a 64Mb UltraNAND on 0.25um technology in 1998. UltraNAND was supposed to do one better than NAND - 100% good blocks and 100k program/erase cycles without ECC - but it never took off and was subsequently shelved.
Why didn't Spansion instead go after Samsung, the No. 3 NOR vendor, with its much larger portfolio of floating gate NOR flash patents? Any successful claims against Samsung are likely to hurt more on the NAND side because of the size of Samsung's NAND business and the more diversified customer base. In addition, it's harder for Samsung to strike back because Spansion has no products based on floating gate NAND.
Spansion also claims to have the strongest portfolio of patents related to charge-trapping (CTF) technology which may be required to extend NAND flash below 30nm. However, it's not clear how applicable Mirrorbit patents are to SONOS NAND because the programming/erase mechanisms and gate stack are different. Spansion may be trying to plug that hole by commericalizing the first SONOS NAND - ORNAND2. In addition to satisfying its own demand for a NAND device in its MCPs, ORNAND2 is also a learning vehicle for developing CTF NAND IP. It'll be interesting to see what innovations Spansion introduces when ORNAND2 starts ramping in production the 2nd half of 2009 on 43nm.
Spansion is claiming Samsung infringed on 10 patents with four of them filed in the ITC complaint and six in the Delaware claim. The patents in question are related to NAND flash memory and include process patents describing methods of forming of the interpoly dielectric, shallow trench isolation as well as programming schemes. The patents, granted between 1998 and 2002, were filed by AMD, the pedigree of Spansion. AMD developed NAND technology and introduced a 64Mb UltraNAND on 0.25um technology in 1998. UltraNAND was supposed to do one better than NAND - 100% good blocks and 100k program/erase cycles without ECC - but it never took off and was subsequently shelved.
Why didn't Spansion instead go after Samsung, the No. 3 NOR vendor, with its much larger portfolio of floating gate NOR flash patents? Any successful claims against Samsung are likely to hurt more on the NAND side because of the size of Samsung's NAND business and the more diversified customer base. In addition, it's harder for Samsung to strike back because Spansion has no products based on floating gate NAND.
Spansion also claims to have the strongest portfolio of patents related to charge-trapping (CTF) technology which may be required to extend NAND flash below 30nm. However, it's not clear how applicable Mirrorbit patents are to SONOS NAND because the programming/erase mechanisms and gate stack are different. Spansion may be trying to plug that hole by commericalizing the first SONOS NAND - ORNAND2. In addition to satisfying its own demand for a NAND device in its MCPs, ORNAND2 is also a learning vehicle for developing CTF NAND IP. It'll be interesting to see what innovations Spansion introduces when ORNAND2 starts ramping in production the 2nd half of 2009 on 43nm.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Why does Samsung need SanDisk?
There’s been a lot of speculation and analysis on why Samsung would acquire SanDisk. Here’s my take.
1. Samsung needs the capacity. – Samsung has enough capacity, especially in this market.
2. Samsung is attracted by SanDisk’s retail reach. – Samsung has a strong retail brand and could have leveraged its own retail channels to push flash cards through its distribution network if it wanted to. Why do it now?
3. Samsung saves on royalty fees and the savings justify an acquisition. – Pay $3 billion (SNDK’s market cap) to save on $400 million a year? Sounds pretty good. >10% ROI. But the level of that royalty stream is not guaranteed and I don’t think Samsung would do a deal just to save on royalty payments.
4. Samsung wants the IP. – Sometime in the next few years, FG NAND flash is likely to hit a brick wall and an alternative technology will be required. CTF has its problems and one of the potential options is 3D memory (see http://forward-insights.blogspot.com/2008/06/sandisk-and-toshiba-to-jointly-develop.html). SanDisk appears to have some fundamental IP in that area. Sure, Samsung could negotiate an extension to their existing cross licensing agreement with SanDisk to include 3D memory but they don’t get the knowhow. The knowhow is what is going to allow the leaders to scale the brick wall.
Samsung is not known for big acquisitions and its last big acquisition of AST Research 20 years ago is not considered a success. And it’s hard to imagine SanDisk’s manufacturing and joint development partner, Toshiba standing idly by as Samsung takes ownership of SanDisk’s most prized assets.
1. Samsung needs the capacity. – Samsung has enough capacity, especially in this market.
2. Samsung is attracted by SanDisk’s retail reach. – Samsung has a strong retail brand and could have leveraged its own retail channels to push flash cards through its distribution network if it wanted to. Why do it now?
3. Samsung saves on royalty fees and the savings justify an acquisition. – Pay $3 billion (SNDK’s market cap) to save on $400 million a year? Sounds pretty good. >10% ROI. But the level of that royalty stream is not guaranteed and I don’t think Samsung would do a deal just to save on royalty payments.
4. Samsung wants the IP. – Sometime in the next few years, FG NAND flash is likely to hit a brick wall and an alternative technology will be required. CTF has its problems and one of the potential options is 3D memory (see http://forward-insights.blogspot.com/2008/06/sandisk-and-toshiba-to-jointly-develop.html). SanDisk appears to have some fundamental IP in that area. Sure, Samsung could negotiate an extension to their existing cross licensing agreement with SanDisk to include 3D memory but they don’t get the knowhow. The knowhow is what is going to allow the leaders to scale the brick wall.
Samsung is not known for big acquisitions and its last big acquisition of AST Research 20 years ago is not considered a success. And it’s hard to imagine SanDisk’s manufacturing and joint development partner, Toshiba standing idly by as Samsung takes ownership of SanDisk’s most prized assets.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Samsung Introduces Server-Grade NAND flash for SSDs
Samsung Electronics announced today that it collaborated with Sun Microsystems to develop a SLC NAND flash memory with five times the endurance of conventional NAND flash memory. This would put the "ultra-endurance server-grade" flash memory at 500k program/erase cycles.
To extend the endurance, Samsung likely tweaked the underlying cell process and/or modified the programming algorithm. The net result is that the improved endurance comes at the expense of reduced performance or retention. However, by targeting high transactional enterprise applications with this device, the degraded retention should not be an issue.
To extend the endurance, Samsung likely tweaked the underlying cell process and/or modified the programming algorithm. The net result is that the improved endurance comes at the expense of reduced performance or retention. However, by targeting high transactional enterprise applications with this device, the degraded retention should not be an issue.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Macronix: After the Qimonda Divorce
Just 3.5 months after signing the agreement, Macronix International and Qimonda AG announced that Qimonda terminated the Flash technology license and joint development agreement. Having lost Euro 482 million in the most recent quarter as well as its technology partner, Nanya Technologies to Micron Technology, Qimonda is in survival mode. By cutting back its flash technology development, Qimonda intends to re-deploy resources to focus on ensuring the success of its new buried wordline DRAM technology.
Macronix, on the other hand, will need to either develop flash technology internally or with another partner. With only $487 million cash on its balance sheet at the end of 2007, Macronix will not be able to fund technology development as well as invest in a leading edge 300mm fab. It will clearly require partners.
However, the number of potential partners is limited as all NAND flash vendors with the exception of Samsung are already aligned with others. An earlier agreement to collaborate with Powerchip Semiconductor on flash memory development and foundry services at fab 12M ended due to a fight between the two companies over control of the Macronix board at last year's shareholders' meeting.
One long-shot possibility is Spansion which is rumored to be developing a SONOS-based memory in a NAND architecture dubbed "ORNAND2". However, the ORNAND2 cell is based on Mirrorbit technology and is therefore different than the BE-SONOS technology championed by Macronix which is based on electron tunneling for programming. The fact that ORNAND2 is based on Mirrorbit technology means it is not really a true NAND. Other than the diverging technology strategies, lingering negative sentiment over Spansion's 2006 trademark infringement lawsuit against Macronix makes any collaboration unlikely.
Despite its collaboration with Numonyx, Hynix may be the most attractive partner. Hynix and Numonyx jointly develop product designs, however, technology development rests mainly with Hynix. Normally a technology follower, Hynix will no longer to be able to just copy the technology of others if it is to become a technology leader. BE-SONOS offers a viable scaling path for sub-40nm NAND and a combination of Macronix's strong development team and Hynix's low cost 300mm wafer manufacturing could make a potent team.
Macronix, on the other hand, will need to either develop flash technology internally or with another partner. With only $487 million cash on its balance sheet at the end of 2007, Macronix will not be able to fund technology development as well as invest in a leading edge 300mm fab. It will clearly require partners.
However, the number of potential partners is limited as all NAND flash vendors with the exception of Samsung are already aligned with others. An earlier agreement to collaborate with Powerchip Semiconductor on flash memory development and foundry services at fab 12M ended due to a fight between the two companies over control of the Macronix board at last year's shareholders' meeting.
One long-shot possibility is Spansion which is rumored to be developing a SONOS-based memory in a NAND architecture dubbed "ORNAND2". However, the ORNAND2 cell is based on Mirrorbit technology and is therefore different than the BE-SONOS technology championed by Macronix which is based on electron tunneling for programming. The fact that ORNAND2 is based on Mirrorbit technology means it is not really a true NAND. Other than the diverging technology strategies, lingering negative sentiment over Spansion's 2006 trademark infringement lawsuit against Macronix makes any collaboration unlikely.
Despite its collaboration with Numonyx, Hynix may be the most attractive partner. Hynix and Numonyx jointly develop product designs, however, technology development rests mainly with Hynix. Normally a technology follower, Hynix will no longer to be able to just copy the technology of others if it is to become a technology leader. BE-SONOS offers a viable scaling path for sub-40nm NAND and a combination of Macronix's strong development team and Hynix's low cost 300mm wafer manufacturing could make a potent team.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
NAND Flash Capex - Full Steam Ahead!
Despite the current oversupply environment and the heavy price drops this quarter (Intel reported ASP declines of 53%), NAND flash manufacturers are maintaining aggressive capex plans. Samsung's ramp of its Austin facility and Hynix's ramp of M11 will offset some of the retirement of 200mm NAND capacity from both companies.
IMFT has maximized its capacity at Manassas and Lehi and will ramp its Singapore fab with maximum capacity of 60k wpm starting in Q3/08. Toshiba/SanDisk's Fab3 reached its full capacity of 150k wpm in September 2007 with Fab4 volume ramp started in December. Fab4 is a massive fab with maximum capacity of 210k wpm.
Powerchip Semiconductor is currently building two fabs P4 and P5 dedicated to the manufacture of NAND flash. These fabs are not expected to ramp in volume until the 50nm generation in 2009.
Spansion as well as foundry partners TSMC and SMIC capex figures includes fungible capacity that may be used to manufacture Mirrorbit NOR.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Qimonda Digs Itself Out of Trench
Qimonda created a stir last week when it unveiled a new DRAM technology called “Buried Wordline Technology” which purportedly consumes less power than conventional stacked capacitor DRAMs. This is achieved by reducing the capacitive coupling between the bitline and wordline by burying the wordline in the substrate of the device. An image of the buried wordline in Qimonda’s presentation appears to show tungsten as the wordline material. The middle of line process in the memory array is greatly simplified compared to standard stacked capacitor devices resulting in reduced process complexity.
Another surprising feature was the absence of a trench capacitor. Qimonda has responded to skepticism regarding the scalability of trench technology by switching to a cylindrical stacked capacitor for its DRAM roadmap down to the 3xnm generation. Qimonda plans to ramp its 65nm buried wordline technology with cell size of 6F2 in parallel with its 58nm 8F2 trench capacitor technology in the second half of 2008. The 65nm 1Gb device sports a die size of 55mm2 comparable to Micron’s 68nm 1Gb DDR2 chip size of 56mm2.
Subsequent 46nm and 3xnm 6F2 generations will be introduced in 2009 and 2010 respectively with a 3xnm 4F2 technology targeted for 2011. According to Qimonda, the 46nm technology is expected to effectively double the number of die per wafer versus the 58nm trench technology allowing the company to take the lead in productivity vis-à-vis the competition. This productivity boost is particularly important for driving down costs, especially in light of the massive €598 million net loss the company posted in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2007 on net sales of €513 million.
Qimonda stated that an incremental investment of €100 million over its existing investment for trench technology would be required to make the transition to the new technology. This would include deposition and etch tooling for hi-k capacitor formation.
The company hinted that the new technology opens up partnering opportunities which is expected to include Qimonda’s manufacturing and foundry partners, Winbond and SMIC although Inotera's participation is questionable given the recent tie-up between Nanya and Micron Technology. If licensing deals with these parties are reached, they would be expected to make similar investments for the conversion from trench to stack technology.
Currently, Qimonda, along with partner Nanya Technology, are the sole remaining DRAM players engaged in the development and production of trench capacitor DRAM technology accounting for a combined 18% of the DRAM market in 2007. The remaining 82% consists of Samsung, Hynix/ProMOS, Elpida/Powerchip and Micron Technology, which are all part of the stacked capacitor camp. With Qimonda’s announcement, trench technology is expected to be phased out of the market in the next three years.
It is also difficult to ignore the timing of the announcement. It appears that Qimonda was pressured to reveal details of its roadmap plans after rumors of a joint development and production agreement between its partner, Nanya Technology and Micron Technology surfaced. The rumors were subsequently confirmed when a memorandum of understanding was announced between the two parties on March 3.
Another surprising feature was the absence of a trench capacitor. Qimonda has responded to skepticism regarding the scalability of trench technology by switching to a cylindrical stacked capacitor for its DRAM roadmap down to the 3xnm generation. Qimonda plans to ramp its 65nm buried wordline technology with cell size of 6F2 in parallel with its 58nm 8F2 trench capacitor technology in the second half of 2008. The 65nm 1Gb device sports a die size of 55mm2 comparable to Micron’s 68nm 1Gb DDR2 chip size of 56mm2.
Subsequent 46nm and 3xnm 6F2 generations will be introduced in 2009 and 2010 respectively with a 3xnm 4F2 technology targeted for 2011. According to Qimonda, the 46nm technology is expected to effectively double the number of die per wafer versus the 58nm trench technology allowing the company to take the lead in productivity vis-à-vis the competition. This productivity boost is particularly important for driving down costs, especially in light of the massive €598 million net loss the company posted in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2007 on net sales of €513 million.
Qimonda stated that an incremental investment of €100 million over its existing investment for trench technology would be required to make the transition to the new technology. This would include deposition and etch tooling for hi-k capacitor formation.
The company hinted that the new technology opens up partnering opportunities which is expected to include Qimonda’s manufacturing and foundry partners, Winbond and SMIC although Inotera's participation is questionable given the recent tie-up between Nanya and Micron Technology. If licensing deals with these parties are reached, they would be expected to make similar investments for the conversion from trench to stack technology.
Currently, Qimonda, along with partner Nanya Technology, are the sole remaining DRAM players engaged in the development and production of trench capacitor DRAM technology accounting for a combined 18% of the DRAM market in 2007. The remaining 82% consists of Samsung, Hynix/ProMOS, Elpida/Powerchip and Micron Technology, which are all part of the stacked capacitor camp. With Qimonda’s announcement, trench technology is expected to be phased out of the market in the next three years.
It is also difficult to ignore the timing of the announcement. It appears that Qimonda was pressured to reveal details of its roadmap plans after rumors of a joint development and production agreement between its partner, Nanya Technology and Micron Technology surfaced. The rumors were subsequently confirmed when a memorandum of understanding was announced between the two parties on March 3.
Monday, February 11, 2008
SanDisk's 3-Bit/Cell NAND Flash Technology Not a Short-Term Play
The development of a 16-gigabit 3-bit per cell (x3) NAND flash on 56-nanometer process technology by SanDisk and Toshiba offers the promise of further NAND flash memory cost reductions.
Due to higher design complexity, lower number of usable blocks and longer test times, x3 technology is expected to offer approximately 20% cost savings over comparable MLC devices at the same process generation.The key innovation of the x3 16Gb chip is the write performance of 8-megabytes per second (MB/s).
This outstanding performance is comparable to 5xnm MLC devices currently on the market and was enabled mainly through the development of an All Bit Line [ABL] architecture and advanced programming algorithms. ABL will also be deployed on all of SanDisk/Toshiba’s MLC devices boosting write performance to 34MB/s – comparable to SLC devices on the market.Alas, the full cost benefits of x3 won’t be realized for another two years, the reason being x3 is currently about one year behind MLC on the technology roadmap.
Nevertheless, Samsung and Intel - Micron Flash Technologies are expected to join the fray in 2008/9 and by 2012, 3-bit per cell NAND is forecast to account for 52.8% of NAND flash memory bits, followed by MLC NAND at 25.4%, 4-bit/cell NAND 16.6% and SLC NAND 4.4%.
Due to higher design complexity, lower number of usable blocks and longer test times, x3 technology is expected to offer approximately 20% cost savings over comparable MLC devices at the same process generation.The key innovation of the x3 16Gb chip is the write performance of 8-megabytes per second (MB/s).
This outstanding performance is comparable to 5xnm MLC devices currently on the market and was enabled mainly through the development of an All Bit Line [ABL] architecture and advanced programming algorithms. ABL will also be deployed on all of SanDisk/Toshiba’s MLC devices boosting write performance to 34MB/s – comparable to SLC devices on the market.Alas, the full cost benefits of x3 won’t be realized for another two years, the reason being x3 is currently about one year behind MLC on the technology roadmap.
Nevertheless, Samsung and Intel - Micron Flash Technologies are expected to join the fray in 2008/9 and by 2012, 3-bit per cell NAND is forecast to account for 52.8% of NAND flash memory bits, followed by MLC NAND at 25.4%, 4-bit/cell NAND 16.6% and SLC NAND 4.4%.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Samsung and Toshiba Form United Front against ONFI
On December 3, 2007, Samsung Electronics and Toshiba Corp. announced that they have licensed to one another, the product specifications and the rights to produce and market Samsung’s OneNAND and Flex-OneNAND, and Toshiba’s LBA-NAND and mobile LBA-NAND memory chips.
Both companies plan to develop compatible products based on the respective specifications to be released next year.
Our Take
After sitting on the sidelines and watching while ONFI amassed a membership roster of 57 companies since its establishment in May 2006, Samsung and Toshiba have finally acted and joined hands to develop products based on common specifications. Both companies are no strangers to collaboration, having shared common NAND specifications for years.
LBA-NAND, Toshiba’s solution for managing the increasing ECC requirements and bad block management of NAND flash by combining NAND flash memory with a controller in a single package, is expected to become mainstream for devices at 40nm and below. ONFI responded with their own version: BA-NAND. With Samsung’s backing, LBA-NAND is expected to be a very viable alternative to BA-NAND.
As for OneNAND, Samsung has been pressured by mobile phone manufacturers to license OneNAND to ensure a second source for the devices. Last year, Samsung licensed OneNAND to ST Microelectronics and now Toshiba. Toshiba and SanDisk (former M-Systems) jointly developed mDOC (mobile Disk-on-Chip) which is similar to OneNAND but based on MLC NAND. Both products integrate a NAND core, SRAM, error correcting engines, and logic circuits in a single chip with a NOR interface. In fact, OneNAND was developed by Samsung based on IP licensed from M-Systems with the licensing agreement subsequently terminated in 2005. mDOC has never been a significant product line for Toshiba and resource-wise, it does not make sense for Toshiba to invest in two similar but incompatible, competing solutions. It appears opting to support OneNAND at the expense of mDOC is the price Toshiba is willing to pay to garner Samsung’s backing for LBA-NAND.
Both companies plan to develop compatible products based on the respective specifications to be released next year.
Our Take
After sitting on the sidelines and watching while ONFI amassed a membership roster of 57 companies since its establishment in May 2006, Samsung and Toshiba have finally acted and joined hands to develop products based on common specifications. Both companies are no strangers to collaboration, having shared common NAND specifications for years.
LBA-NAND, Toshiba’s solution for managing the increasing ECC requirements and bad block management of NAND flash by combining NAND flash memory with a controller in a single package, is expected to become mainstream for devices at 40nm and below. ONFI responded with their own version: BA-NAND. With Samsung’s backing, LBA-NAND is expected to be a very viable alternative to BA-NAND.
As for OneNAND, Samsung has been pressured by mobile phone manufacturers to license OneNAND to ensure a second source for the devices. Last year, Samsung licensed OneNAND to ST Microelectronics and now Toshiba. Toshiba and SanDisk (former M-Systems) jointly developed mDOC (mobile Disk-on-Chip) which is similar to OneNAND but based on MLC NAND. Both products integrate a NAND core, SRAM, error correcting engines, and logic circuits in a single chip with a NOR interface. In fact, OneNAND was developed by Samsung based on IP licensed from M-Systems with the licensing agreement subsequently terminated in 2005. mDOC has never been a significant product line for Toshiba and resource-wise, it does not make sense for Toshiba to invest in two similar but incompatible, competing solutions. It appears opting to support OneNAND at the expense of mDOC is the price Toshiba is willing to pay to garner Samsung’s backing for LBA-NAND.
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