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Technology Stocks : Spansion Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Pam who wrote (3089)	1/18/2008 10:57:52 AM
From: Rink	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4590

Pam, re: with a Quadbit architecture [at 65nm], I would get 4Gb in 160mm2 and that is no match to Toshiba/Sandisk/Samsung's 8Gb on 56/51nm with a die size of under 100mm2! Hope you don't mind me repeating it once, but your conclusion is incorrect if Spansion is more or less right here: Due to the increased storage capacity per cell, MirrorBit Quad technology is capable of delivering up to 30 percent smaller effective cell size per bit than floating-gate MLC NAND Flash memory technology at the same process technology node. investor.spansion.com Even if their would be no (<=30%) advantage a 4Gb Mirrorbit Quad chip at 65nm would be approximately (in an ideal scaling situation) equate to a 8Gb MLC NAND chip at 45nm. (Or in other words a 4Gb Mirrorbit Quad chip would have the same size as a 4Gb MLC NAND chip at the same process node, provided there was no <=30% size advantage.) Regards, Rink

To: Pam who wrote (3089)	1/18/2008 1:13:54 PM
From: KeithDust2000	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4590

Pam, Well, it remains to be seen how successful 65nm transition will be. Production hasn't started yet, but hopefully it will happen soon. [...] Transition with every node gets difficult. Spansion's 65nm production has not even started yet and it is a bit premature to think about 45nm! --------- -- Spansion announced that it has started production of MirrorBit technology at 65nm on 300mm wafers at its Spansion 1 (SP1) facility in Japan, with plans to ship 65nm products to customers by the end of the year. investor.spansion.com

To: Pam who wrote (3089)	1/18/2008 3:23:30 PM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4590

Pam, The key is GM expansion which currently stands at 18% Without an improvement in GMs Spansion, will not survive for too long. yeah, those obviously have to improve for Spansion to prosper. When 65nm goes into production, a clearer picture will emerge on their GM front. The picture will never be entirely clear, since there is a whole bunch of legacy product being sold on legacy process nodes, all at the same time. There are a lot of transitions going on at the same time. For example, the very low end stuff is being migrated from fabs that were sold (JV1, JV2) to 110nm, some other legacy chips are being migrated to 90nm and 65nm. Only SP1 is in production of pure 65nm parts. Fab 25, while it itself gets upgraded to 65nm (200mm) is mainly producing 90nm and probably even 110nm stuff. It is not because Spansion has a desire to do so, or that SP1 is not capable of producing more advanced chips. It is because clients want them for their existing designs. NOR market is very different from NAND market in this regard. So while Spansion wants to hurry clients to start accepting chips made at latest process nodes, Spansion has a limited ability to do so. It is mainly the new design wins that get the latest 65nm output from SP1 (and at some point in the future, 65nm output from Fab 25, and eventually TSMC and/or SMIC). They also need to gain market share from others so that others lose economies of scale. Definitely. And Spansion gains economies of scale at the same time. Spansion has only 32 to 33% of the NOR market, while at the same time, it has the more advanced product, and arguably the lowest costs of all NOR players (and the gap is going to be growing). That should translate to some market share gains, which in turn should allow (prompt) higher wafer starts in SP1, which should in turn lead to higher margins. Higher margins in turn would prompt faster transition to 45nm and immersion lithography. BTW, from my post from yesterday, transition to 45nm depends on maturity of yields, but also on timing of purchases for additional equipment (Spansion need to manage the cash situation), so it is all connected, and could result in a virtuous cycle, if things go well. Well, it remains to be seen how successful 65nm transition will be. Production hasn't started yet, but hopefully it will happen soon. 65nm production started on September 19, 2007: investor.spansion.com The product is a standard Mirrorbit (2 bits per cell) flash. The product was supposed to ship for revenue before the end of 2007. We will get a confirmation of whether it happened during the CC. You may be confusing this with 4 bit per cell 65nm product that only now started sampling. Transition with every node gets difficult. Spansion's 65nm production has not even started yet and it is a bit premature to think about 45nm! IMFT tried dry lithography with 50nm NAND and had to move to immersion. Samsung has had their fair share of troubles with transitions to finer nodes, especially with MLC NAND. So we will have to wait and see how smoothly 65nm transition happens for Spansion and what kind of yields they are able to get. I don't think we will ever find out about the yeilds, but my assumption is that the yields are acceptable, since Spansion accelerated capital spending on SP1 to get it online faster than expected. If 65nm looked problematic, Spansion would have rolled it out at far lower cost and far lower volume from Fab 25. But you are right about the transition to 45nm, which for Spansion means transition to immersion lithography, and that it remains somewhat of an unknown at this time. Spansion's die sizes I haven't seen anything up to date on Spansion die sizes, so I don't want to get too deep into speculation outside of a rough ballpark, which would be (regarding die sizes) - IMO: 4bit ORNAND < 2 bit (MLC) NAND < 2 bit (Mirrorbit) NOR < 1 bit NAND < 1 bit NOR Hopefully, something more solid will emerge from Spansion to enable us to make a comparison. But when it comes to comparison of 4 bit ORNAND, which lags way behind mainstream 2 bin NAND in process technology transitions (and lags in some performance characteristics), the comparison ir pretty much irrelevant as of now. Exactly! NOR business is stagnant and the only way to survive is to steal market share from a weaker player and achieve growth for yourself. That is true. But Spansion's ambitions are not limited to NOR market. Spansion just choses not to broadcast these ambitions to financial press. And, of course, the priority is to take market share from weaker NOR players before fighting stronger NAND players. I am not doubting Spansion's ability to do a 45nm transition, but I think it will go into production sometime in 2009 not in 2008 That may very well happen. the issue will also be whether to try to accelerate and improve 4bit 65nm or 2bit 45nm. 45nm transition will have higher CapEx associated with it. Joe