Dan and All,
Does Samsong's FRAM licensed from RMTR or someone else? Will Samsong's progress on 4M FRAM give FRAM a kick-start? Predicted $15B FRAM market by 2005. What a growth and potential!
Sunny
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Samsung readies 4-Mbit ferroelectric memory for
portable, multimedia systems
A service of Semiconductor Business News, CMP Media Inc.
Story posted 9 a.m. EST/6 a.m., PST, 7/21/99
SEOUL--Samsung Electronics Co. today announced the development of a 4-megabit
ferroelectric RAM (FRAM), which will be aimed at portable systems, multimedia products
and other high-speed computing applications requiring fast, nonvolatile solid-state storage.
The South Korean chip maker claimed to have a two-year lead in the development of
4-Mbit FRAMs while other suppliers worldwide are still focused on bringing 256-kilobit
chips to the market. Samsung said its high-density FRAM is based on a
one-transistor-per-cell (1T/1C) structure, and it uses a capacitor-over-bitline (COB)
technology. The combination of 1T/1C cells and COB technology results in an FRAM die
that's half the size of competing designs, according to Samsung.
The 4-Mbit FRAM operates on 3.3 volts of power and has access time of 75 nanoseconds,
said the company. The low-power and high speed make the 4-Mbit FRAM well matched
for mobile phones and portable multimedia products, said Samsung, which sees ferroelectric
memories as bringing together the best attributes of flash, DRAM and SRAM technologies
in a single device. By 2005, Samsung predicts total FRAM revenues will reach $15 billion a
year worldwide.
Samsung said engineering samples of the 4-Mbit FRAMs will be available at the end of this
year. |
