Well folks... you can thank your lucky stars that RMTR has made it to a "profitable" market by going after low density E2PROM and SRAM sockets and embedded applications.
It sounds very much like the industry is set to take FLASH derivatives all the way to 2015 or the "Death of CMOS" at the very least. Spansion is preparing for this by acquiring Saifun and its charge trapping IP:
That's where Saifun sees its technology coming in. According to executives at the company, Saifun's technology doesn't suffer from any of the miniaturization problems found in floating-gate NAND. And Saifun's technology is suitable as the basis for all sorts of memory -- NAND, NOR, even DRAM.
As NAND's expiration date on floating gate gets closer, Spansion believes companies will have no choice but to license the Saifun technology it owns. The change will occur as soon as the next 12 to 18 months, said Cambou.
Of course, predicting an industry's move to a new technology standard is inherently tricky. Businesses have a way of figuring out clever workarounds that extend the status quo, rather than taking abrupt -- and risky -- jumps to entirely new technologies.
But Jim Handy, a memory analyst at industry research firm Objective Analysis, contends that switching NAND manufacturing from today's technology to the Saifun technology is not as big a leap as it might seem. Saifun's so-called charge-trapping technology doesn't involve using any new processes or chemicals in a standard silicon manufacturing line, he notes.
"There's no question that all flash manufacturers are going to use charge-trapping in the future," says Handy. "The question is whether or not Spansion can use Saifun's IP [intellectual property] to get royalties from that."
thestreet.com
IBM, Intel, STM, Toshiba, and friends are all happy to talk MRAM and PCRAM... but all of them are still planning FLASH products for their high volume cutting edge processes as far as the PR eye can see:
physorg.com
None of them is going to cannibalize their FLASH market investments until they have to do so. As I see it... that makes F-RAM's ability to make a profit today... on the older, fully depreciated, manufacturing process equipment... which is now inhabiting most of the world's fabs including China's... extremely beneficial for RMTR.
I don't see MRAM or PCRAM ever threatening F-RAM's market position at low density, 32Mb and below, levels in either standalone or embedded apps. If they could do it economically, it would have already been done. And I don't see that ever happening unless they can first beat the cost/performance benefits of FLASH and that's not going to happen before 2012 if ever. And if there's real concern that CMOS will "expire" by 2015... who is going to flip the switch on gabillion dollar "new" MRAM, PCRAM or _RAM product line before they know what foundation IP will follow CMOS? Talk about "high stakes poker"... WHooooooo! <Hoo><vbg><Hoo>
But before any of that can happen... I think we have at least 4 more years of industry/academic research in which to see a potential breakthrough in quantum dot or quantum well ferroelectrics which might result in a competitive sub 05nm node ferroelectric memory device for the post CMOS era. :)
Not that I would expect RMTR to have any ownership in such IP... that would take a miracle beyond my wildest imaginings... but if in fact FLASH survives on the cutting edge of process IP until 2012 or later neither PCRAM nor MRAM is going to make much of a dent in any market before that time... and may well be leap-frogged by whatever IP takes over from CMOS.
Well... at least that's how I see the long term developments at this point... Not that I expect to be here in 2015... or 2012 for that matter. But if I'm fortunate enough to be anywhere at that time I will certainly make every effort... SIAdmin willing... to check in and see how things turned out for all the State Saver/logic hybrid product lines. <Hoo><Hoo><Haa>
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