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Politics : RAMTRONIAN's Cache Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: makeuwonder who wrote (13276)	5/27/2007 4:16:31 AM
From: NightOwl	Respond to of 14464

No problem Kim Fay... But it's not about being "tech smart" which I am certainly not. All I do is re-spin what I find w/Google: *1. So what does that mean?? What are logic devices beyond the (CURRENT) CMOS IP? What is the current CMOS IP?* Every company in the semiconductor business has an opinion on whether, when and where CMOS process IP will make a major shift to some new manufacturing process. Right now there is nothing approaching a consensus in those opinions that I can see. I don't think anyone really knows. But to the extent they are willing to express an opinion, you can find what they are saying through Google or other search engines. Here's a slide presentation of recent "opinions" from Intel: download.intel.com I can't begin to describe the current CMOS process in any meaningful way. Other than to say it involves the production of transistor circuits generally in metal-oxide-silicon formulations for the manipulation of 1s and 0s or off - on states, I am clueless. But for me such simplified descriptions don't begin to describe everything involved. The Intel PDF includes a listing of many of the possible replacements. There are others, but L'Intel clearly has a bias leading them to assume that mainstream logic will follow the direction of one of the current Advanced Memory types. This may not prove true by 2025. And you could no doubt find other companies who would disagree with details of their candidates/categorization/descriptions. But as I say their seems to be little consensus on anything beyond the need to "consider" possible alternatives at this point. 2. current Advanced NV-Memory technologies What are these? The ones I mean are the Ferroelectric, Magnetic, Phase Change and Resistance based technologies. There are others like holographic/optical, molecular, various nanomechanical switching schemes... but they're not far enough along to worry about as far I can tell. 3. FRAM development produces a massive and entirely new market "niche" in which some "Killer Application" aids in pushing RMTR revenues to "shocking"... and competition drawing... levels; ...if you could elaborate on this a bit??? I started to give a number... but thought it would be too speculative for a guesstimation of how much revenue FRAM would have to generate in order to attract competition from the MRAM/PCRAM supporters. The number I had in mind was something on the order of $300 - 500M in FRAM annual sales. But that's a meaningless market size for L'Intel. Their sale of the PCRAM assets in the ST deal suggests that they don't see PCRAM as worthwhile market for them whatever its "projected" revenue may be. And it may not even be enough to entice an MOT/MRAM to jump into a cutthroat memory market. But its not just a matter of finding an enticing revenue number. All the leading memory players, and semiconductor players generally, require markets that they can serve at the bleeding edge of density (chips/wafer and high volume wafer runs) in order to feed the huge R&D/Development fab costs they are locked into. Those costs go up every year, so the size of the markets they need to find also constantly rises. Current FRAM markets, no matter how much revenue they generate, don't serve that bleeding edge of density. At 130nm and larger process nodes all production is primarily on older depreciated equipment. So it would do nothing to justify/offset current bleeding edge costs. If a company has a lot of old equipment set up to service customers of older low density EEPROM/FLASH/BBSRAM, it will have to know it can move/replace those customers, before switching to FRAM or other new competing IP. Most supporters of PCRAM/MRAM have decided that their associated costs of production require markets served at, or near, the bleeding edge of density and volume. Then too FRAM's performance/cost structure now competes with old low density EEPROM/FLASH/BBSRAM IP in applications wherein its performance can't be matched. There is no guarantee that FRAMS current application volumes will exist at the higher densities. Certainly some applications "scale" in their memory use like the PC has... but that is not a "current" FRAM application... and its not at all clear that things like copy machines, industrial controllers, meters or "counters" will follow that kind of curve. Will FRAM or another new memory IP ever compete in PClike markets? Beats me... but I doubt we'll see much PCRAM/MRAM unless they can. So the size of FRAM's worldwide "low density" gross sales may have very little to do with the lack of PCRAM/MRAM in the markets. Its probably more a question of those technologies simply not having customers at 128Mb willing to pay more for the performance they claim to bring to the table compared to the mainstream IP. FRAM's sales (regardless of gross levels) would have to find a real PClike "Killer Application" to force competition from PCRAM/MRAM. One in which they could charge maximum prices because the old IP can't do the job, and one in which they can project demand for future device scaling too. That's possible... but I don't think its likely any more than the death of old CMOS IP in our life time. For PCRAM/MRAM to make it in the world of "bleeding edge densities" anytime soon, their producers will either have to sell at the price of the old IP and eat their losses... or find a way to force it down their customers' throats. You know... kind of like L'Intel used-to-and-would-like-to-if-it-still-could-but-can't. <Hoo><Hoo><Haa> Considering the fact that L'Intel couldn't make money selling the old FLASH IP, it is not surprising that they've lost interest in selling PCRAM against the price/performance structure of FLASH or DRAM. That could change if someone were to find an entirely new market with "Killer App" qualities. But L'Intel is not in that business... unless it can buy in. 0\|0