I doubt that they have separate
256, 512 and 1.0 gigabit production lines.
I would guess the opposite, but I really don't know.
At 512 megabit densities I am still unclear as to how smaller CF and SM cards
are manufactured (8, 16 and 32MB). Do you understand how "chop-chop" works?
I didn't hear Eli's original quote on the subject, but I gathered that he was talking about disabling some of the capacity on a chip to sell it at a nominally lower density. The reasoning I would guess is that you mis-planned your production split and don't want to drive down prices by giving bits away, eg., selling 32MB cards at 16MB prices. Seems like an extreme thing to do, but maybe it really happens. Haven't heard of it outside this thread.
Finally, thanks for the clarification on Ovonics. You explanation makes good sense.
Still, I think that Eli and crew have a big head start on OUM at this stage. It will
take a few years, IMHO, to see how much of a threat OUM, FRAM, MRAM,... will prove to be.
It's very hard to say if/when OUM will ever debut. Intel last July had a future-nv press bonanza, highlighting their initiatives in OUM and polymer-FRAM. Here's some links from that day:
video interview with Stefan Lai: news.cnet.com
My transcription of the interview: messages.yahoo.com
EE-Times coverage: eetimes.com
Intel pdf -- this is the best source: intel.com
zdnet story: zdnet.com
Basically, Lai thinks that OUM can function as a 'true' memory in mobile applications, replacing SRAM and Flash in most, and sometimes needing SRAM integrated on the OUM chip, which is supposed to be much easier to do than with Flash. Lai says there is a lot of software complexity you can eliminate by not having to deal with a very slow technology like Flash. Speedwise, there are several orders of magnitude between Flash and DRAM, and OUM fits in the middle. They like OUM vs MRAM because of its density advantage, having a basic cell size smaller than even DRAM or Flash.
It's hard to say how speculative OUM still is at this point. I had thought initially when I heard Intel was farming out the OUM chip design work to Azalea that this was a brush-off, but then I found this article showing that Intel is also having Azalea work on the 4-bit Flash design: siliconstrategies.com
Well, they've got their fingers in a lot of pies -- have to spread out the risk.
NROM is another interesting comer -- here's a post I made a while back:
Message 16242408
Careful with my analysis as it may not be true <g>.
wily |
