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To: DJBEINO who wrote (4096)	10/11/1998 8:44:00 PM
From: DJBEINO	Respond to of 9582

Memory prices rising Barbara Jorgensen While it may not be the best news for buyers, the beleaguered semiconductor market may see a ray of hope as some memory prices begin to firm up on the spot market. According to the American IC Exchange, Mission Viejo, Calif., 4-Mbit x 4 fast-page-mode DRAMs appear to be tight in the market; prices have been climbing since the last week of August, hitting $2.47 last week. Also exhibiting price increases are 4-Mbyte x 4 and 8-Mbyte x 32 FPM SIMMs, incorporating 4-Mbit x 4 DRAM chips, said AICE (www.aice.com), which tracks spot-market prices through its RAMDEX index. The uptick is likely associated with several factors, according to analysts and distributors. One is a seasonal rise in demand, as OEMs begin to ramp up for the holiday season. Beyond that, some DRAM vendors are taking an aggressive stance on pricing in an effort to stimulate earnings, which have been battered by more than three years of falling prices. In particular, NEC Corp. has said it will raise its prices on some DRAM products. Market watchers warn that the uptick may be short-lived, however. Once the seasonal adjustment is over, predictions for the end of the current oversupply market extend as far out as 2000. techweb.com

To: DJBEINO who wrote (4096)	10/11/1998 8:48:00 PM
From: DJBEINO	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9582

SRAM still No. 1, but DRAM rising John Mayer While embedded memory of all types is becoming more available, SRAM remains the most common implementation. Of the total embedded-memory market in 1998, SRAMs have accounted for 78% of the megabytes shipped, while DRAMs have accounted for little more than 5%, according to Semico Research Corp., Phoenix. "Static RAM is very similar to the ASIC logic process, so it's been used in embedded applications for a long, long time," said Thomas Liao, vice president of the Electronic Device Group at Mitsubishi Electronics America Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif. "Today, I would say more than 50% of all SRAM is probably embedded instead of discrete." But analyst Bob Merritt of Semico, author of a new report on the embedded-memory market, expects to see a dramatic shift in the next few years as new sub-0.25-micron processes come on line and the densities of embedded DRAM available to chip designers rise. By 2000, DRAM will represent more than 48% of the total Mbytes of embedded memory shipped, while SRAM will drop to about 33%, according to Semico. "With some of the newer designs, the use of embedded memory is changing from a kind of cache/scratch-pad application to more of a traditional nonvolatile-main-memory application," Merritt said. Semiconductor manufacturers say they're already seeing a shift. "The utilization of DRAM is quickly becoming more cost-effective than SRAM; so we're seeing the demand for DRAM actually taking away business from SRAM," said Farzad Zarrinfar, director of ASIC marketing at Samsung Semiconductor Inc., San Jose. But many factors will likely affect when that shift occurs. "It partially depends on the process technologies, because as you get down to 0.18, 0.15, and 0.12 [micron], you can build much larger memory sizes on-chip," Liao said. "But once the PC can use embedded DRAM as main memory, the quantity will be huge." Even when semiconductor manufacturers bring 0.18-micron processes on line, SRAM is still apt to play an important role in system-on-a-chip designs, said Robert Pierce, director of emerging memories at Siemens Microelectronics Inc., Cupertino, Calif. "While the density of SRAMs in 0.25-micron technology is probably about 8 microns squared, when you get down to a 0.18-micron process, you're looking at 3 to 4 microns squared per bit," Pierce said. "So you can put a substantial amount of SRAM on-chip. That's very attractive because, unlike DRAM, you don't have to worry about memory controllers." In the meantime, analysts also see a sizable market for embedded flash memory. Semico estimates that embedded flash will constitute more than 17% of the total embedded-memory market in 1998 and rise to close to 19% by 2000. "In certain applications, customers want as much on-chip flash memory as we can give them," said Dan Mansur, group product marketing manager at Hitachi Semiconductor (America) Inc., Brisbane, Calif. As the price of embedded flash becomes more competitive, Mansur sees an increasingly long list of potential applications. "In two years, most of us will be using embedded flash every day and not know it," he said. techweb.com