Hi all; On Intel's financial support of memory makers RDRAM production. Where did the money go...
"We did receive a proposal to fund production of Rambus DRAM, but we cannot comment further than that," said a Toshiba spokesman, who confirmed that Intel is behind the cash offer. "We are just starting to look at it."
Though it may be the first Japanese company to publicly acknowledge such an offer, Toshiba's position is hardly unique in the industry. Last October, Intel made a $500 million investment in Boise, Idaho-based Micron Technology Inc., which swapped the rights to 6% of its shares for a promise to aggressively ramp Direct RDRAM in 1999.
More recently, Intel extended a $100 million incentive to Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. in exchange for convertible bonds, representing about 1% of Samsung's outstanding common stock. Toshiba would not comment on the cash value of Intel's latest proposal.
...
In all, Intel could spend as much as $1 billion to grease the industry's shift to Direct RDRAM, which is expected to ship in about 15% [oops!] of all PCs by the end of 1999, according to deDios. Intel would not comment on its investment strategy.
techweb.com
Concerned that DRAM suppliers may be getting cold feet, Intel Corp. in the past several months has approached most of Japan's chip makers, offering to help pay for the initial equipment costs associated with Direct RDRAM. To date, Mitsubishi and NEC have rejected the Intel offer.
...
Subodh Toprani, vice president and general manager of the logic products division of Rambus Inc., Mountain View, Calif., said the back-end investment for Direct RDRAM equates to about $10 million for every million chips produced. Samsung, for example, has estimated it spent $80 million in back-end investment in the hopes of reaching a production level of 8 million chips a month. "I think spending an additional $80 million in the back end is a small investment to keep a $1.5 billion fab full," Toprani said.
techweb.com
What kind of "initial equipment costs" are associated with RDRAM? RDRAM uses more or less the same process as other DRAMs, but because the parts have much more difficult timing requirements to meet, they also require much more accurate testing equipment:
"One reason for the cost difference is that the Rambus DRAMs require a new infrastructure at the back end," Tabrizi said. "To produce 1 million RDRAMs a month requires an investment of $10 million to $20 million. Hyundai currently makes about 40 million 64-Mbit DRAMs per month, and to convert our capacity to the Rambus memories would cost a minimum of $400 million and perhaps as much as $800 million. On the other hand, in the case of PC133 we already have the testers in place."
techweb.com
Intel invests $250M in Infineon Feb 28, 00
Observers were unclear whether the prime motive behind Intel's investment was to grab a piece of Germany's second-largest IPO, or to guarantee that Infineon ramps production of Direct Rambus DRAM to suit Intel's market needs.
techweb.com
So who makes these memory testers, and can we find out some details about their equipment? A quick search finds:
Advantest, Hewlett-Packard, Schlumberger and Teradyne have all announced or begun to ship machines to Rambus Inc. and other memory manufacturers.
techweb.com
Advantest
Advantest-the acknowledged market leader in memory test, with about 65 percent of the market-fielded the 1-GHz, eight-site T5591 Rambus tester to handle "the next 18 months of business, because we cannot afford to miss a step," said marketing manager Gary Fleeman. "We'll have a 64-site solution as soon as the market demands it. Remember, the new memories are a gray area right now."
techweb.com
When you get to their website, you see an advertisement for their DDR tester, but not for their RDRAM tester. Doesn't look good, test equipment is the leading indicator for DRAM production:
Memory testing you won't forget. The T5585 for high volume package production test of DDR-SDRAM memory devices.
advantest.com
Advantest has the following DRAM testers. Take a look at the specs on the T5591, the one that was mentioned above as a tester for RDRAM. It also does DDR. As does the other Advantest RDRAM tester, but all three do DDR:
T5591: RDRAM, DDR-SDRAM (x8)
T5585: DDR, SDRAM (x128)
T5592: RDRAM, DDR-II (x64)
Teradyne
Teradyne's only RDRAM tester, the ARIES, also does DDR, though you might not have known this based on this press release:
Teradyne ARIES High-Speed Memory Test System Ready for Direct RAMBUS Device and
RIMM Module Test
teradyne.com
teradyne.com
But if we go to look up the details on the Aries High-Speed Memory Test System, and what do you know, it also tests DDR:
help you realize the lowest possible cost to manufacture the newest generation of devices such as: Direct Rambus (TM) DRAMs, DDR SDRAMs, SLDRAMs, and fast SSRAMs.
teradyne.com
HP (Agilent)
The third memory test ATE maker is HP (Agilent). When HP came out with the HP95000, their current generation high speed memory tester, all everybody could talk about was how it would be used in RDRAM production. But it turns out that the top end HP equipment also does DDR, as is well known in the industry, though you have to dig around a little to find a link:
5. DDR SDRAM testing on HP95000 HSM Series (Dong-Weon Yi , Agilent)
online.niu.edu
Schlumberger
I can't get any decent data sheets on the Schlumberger RDRAM tester, something is causing their PDF files to come up blank on me. All I can get is that the RDX2400 is kind of expensive, compared to the equivalent DDR tester. On the other hand, RDRAMs probably can be tested faster:
Pricing on the Schlumberger RDX2400 starts at $4.4 million.
techweb.com
But Schlumberger's only shipping SDRAM tester also does DDR:
DX2001- High performance Production Test Solution for SDRAM and DDR
1.slb.com
Memory makers, particularly Samsung, have been buying the above unit for SDRAM testing. So they will be ready to convert to DDR production without a change in equipment:
Last week at Semicon, the company introduced the DX2001, a high-performance production memory tester for 64-, 128- and 256-Mbit SDRAM and DDR (double data rate) ICs, as well as SRAMs.
According to Schlumberger, the DX2001-which was developed in close cooperation with Samsung-outperforms the competition in terms of test time, yield, speed binning and socket utilization, and has a low overall cost compared with other high-volume memory testers. Samsung in Korea received its first unit over a year ago, and multiple memory testers are now installed for 64-Mbit SDRAM final test.
...
The closest competing unit, according to Mack, is Advantest's T5581, a highly successful, 64-site, 250-MHz memory tester introduced in late 1995. However, Advantest-which holds close to half of the worldwide memory test market-late last year rolled out the T5591, which boasts 1-GHz data rates (500-MHz test rate) and liquid cooling, but has only eight-site production capability.
techweb.com
Mosaid
In addition to the above four, Mosaid announced a DDR tester, the 4155, back in July '99, as a modification of their 4105 SDRAM tester:
MS4155 Memory Test System
The MS4155 Memory Test System is designed to test and analyze PC133, SDR and DDR SDRAM memory devices. One major feature of the MS4155 is a Real-time Bitmap Tool that sets new standards in high-speed bitmap capture, storage, retrieval, manipulation and display allowing the user to capture, manipulate and view error bitmaps for gigabit sized devices as quickly and easily as bitmaps for kilobit devices.
mosaid.com
RIMM / DDR DIMM testers
In addition to chip testing, RIMMs and DIMMs must be tested. I haven't searched this field as completely as I have the memory chip testing field, but it seems like the above 4 equipment makers can also test RIMMs and DIMMs. Those testers are pretty expensive to use on modules, but RIMM modules have very tight timing requirements. (See the recent Intel release where they changed a timing requirement for RIMMs by 60ps.) It is my guess that with SDRAM (and probably DDR) the module makers check for functionality, but don't do full timing tests (i.e. setup and hold verification). These kinds of tests are a lot easier than the kind of tests that RIMMs should be put through. I found only one maker of testers for RIMMs, Tanisys. Their equipment is quite sloppy in terms of its timing margins when compared to the HP equipment, which comparison they make on their own website. But on the other hand, their equipment is a lot cheaper. It is my guess that this is the sort of equipment that the DDR DIMM people will use for testing their stuff. The same base equipment can be upgraded for either DDR or RDRAM testing:
SIGMA3 can be upgraded to accommodate testing emerging memory technologies such as Rambus© RIMM Modules and DDR. SIGMA3 has adapters to fit most test applications and companion handling, labeling and packaging equipment for full automation of the post assembly process.
tanisys.com
In short, Intel paid the memory makers to prepare for RDRAM production. What they got, was an industry that is in near perfect shape for conversion to DDR production. The various memory makers ensured that they would have DDR capability either by making sure that their SDRAM testers (which are probably 90% of their memory ATE equipment) are DDR compatible, or by purchasing RDRAM testers that can be easily converted to DDR testing.
Because of Intel's financial contributions to the memory makers, the transition to DDR will be one of the easiest in history for the memory makers.
-- Carl |
