Elpida is an Apple Inc. supplier for chips used in their smartphones, tablets and computers. Micron’s acquisition of Elpida will double its share in the market for DRAM memory chips or dynamic random-access memory chips. About $1.25 billion will be invested in building up DRAM product, which should leave Micron with about a quarter of the global DRAM business. Samsung holds over 40 percent.

Of course, until all the details have been settled and approval is obtained from Elpida’s creditors, Micron will likely not issue any further statement about the acquisition. Some are predicting that once the acquisition has been finalized, Micron will focus on server DRAM and NAND while Elpida plants will focus on production of mobile and commodity DRAM.

[via Reuters]

Appleton is attributed with building semiconductor company Micron into one of the world’s largest makers of DRAM memory chips. He has a long history with the company, starting out as a production worker and eventually working his way up. He became an advocate for fair trade against Japanese rivals, which dominated the memory chip market back in the 80s by selling chips below cost, a practice known as dumping.

“We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Appleton, Micron Chairman and CEO, passed away this morning in a small plane accident in Boise. He was 51. Our hearts go out to his wife, Dalynn, his children and his family during this tragic time. Steve’s passion and energy left an indelible mark on Micron, the Idaho community and the technology industry at large,” read a statement issued by Micron’s board.

Appleton had survived a plane crash back in 2004, where he sustained head injuries, a punctured lung, ruptured disk, and broken bones. However, he had not revealed the severity of his crash until 2006.

[via VentureBeat]

The new 128Gb MLC NAND is made using 20nm process and the 64Gb NAND entering production uses the same 20nm process. The 128Gb NAND is MLC and it is the first in the industry to allow a terabit of storage in a device the since of a fingertip using eight die. It offers twice the performance and capacity of the existing 64Gb flavor.

Micron notes that the 128Gb device meets ONFI 3.0 specifications and hits speeds of 333 megatransfers per second. Intel and Micron expect samples of the 128Gb NAND to be available in January. Mass production is expected in the first half of 2012. The 64Gb versions in production right now and will allow quick ramping to the new 128Gb chips.

To achieve what Samsung and Micron insist is a “complete paradigm shift” the companies have developed a brand new memory architecture, pairing high-speed logic process technology with a memory through-silicon-via (TSC) bonded memory die stack. That will allow memory to keep pace with the Moore’s Law progress of CPUs and GPUs, which are increasingly using multicore technologies that demand more memory per compute element.

“HMC blends the best of logic and DRAM processes into a heterogeneous package.  At the foundation of HMC is a small logic layer which sits below vertical stacks of DRAM die connected by through-silicon via (TSV) bonds.  An energy optimized DRAM array provides efficient access to memory bits via the logic layer, providing an intelligent memory device truly optimized for performance and energy efficiencies” HMCC

Rather than being overwhelmed with the current crop of multicore processors, falling short on memory bandwidth and density, HMC will apparently be able to keep up with even exascale computing expected in the future. At its heart is the 3D construction of the various silicon layers, with the logic layer as the base and then dense layers of memory stacked on top.

The HMCC expects to have an industry-adoptable specification for HMC sometime in 2012, and Samsung and Micron are looking for other memory players to throw in with them.

[via GigaOm]

The P320h uses Micron’s 34nm SLC NAND flash memory with two capacities offered for the drive with the smallest being 350GB and the largest being 700GB. The capacity is sufficiently large, but the performance of the P320h is what is really impressive. The SSD is able to hit 3GBs of sustained throughput per second. That works out to 750,000 IOPS read and 341,000 IOPS write performance.

The Micron solution is aimed at the backend infrastructure needed in a club media streaming application and for web servers and online transaction processing among other things. The SSD uses the Micron RAIN technology to ensure the protection of enterprise data across the NAND flash memory channels. The SSD is a full height, half-length device measuring 111.15mm W x 167.65mm L x 14.47mm T. Pricing is unknown with mass production set to start in Q3.

The new RealSSD memory will launch as the Crucial m4 SSD C400 in Q1 2011, but Micron is also pushing the C400 technology to other manufacturers so there should be some competition around. Mass production is expected to kick off in February.

Press Release:

Micron Introduces Faster, Higher Capacity Solid-State Drives for NAND Flash-Based Notebooks

First SSD Portfolio to Use Industry’s Most Advanced 25-Nanometer NAND Technology

BOISE, Idaho, Jan. 4, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq:MU) today unveiled a new portfolio of the industry’s most advanced RealSSDTM solid-state drives (SSDs) for the fast growing flash-based notebook market. A new breed of notebooks are entering the market that have lightweight construction, snappier system responsiveness and a longer lasting battery—all made possible because of the innovations in flash-based storage products.

“SSDs are bringing excitement back into personal computing,” said Dean Klein, vice president of memory system development at Micron. “Micron is accelerating this enthusiasm with our new RealSSD portfolio, providing even greater performance and higher capacities than our previous generation SSDs.”

The new portfolio is the first SSD product line to incorporate Micron’s 25-nanometer (nm) NAND flash technology, creating a broad portfolio of capacities ranging from 64-gigabyte (GB) to 512GB. The drives will be available in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch form factors. As with its predecessor, the product line also supports the SATA 6Gb/s interface, which opens up the data path between the host processor and the SSD delivering improved overall system responsiveness including faster boot times and speedier application loads. The new drives reach read speeds up to 415 megabytes (MB)/second, which is 17 percent faster than Micron’s previous generation drives. With write performance varying by capacity, the new 512GB drive achieves up to 260 MB/second write speeds, which is more than 20 percent faster than the fastest C300 drive. The new SSDs also provide benefits that desktops, workstations and industrial applications can take advantage of including low power consumption, lightweight construction and resistance to shock and vibration.

“At IDC we expect total portable PC SSD shipments to increase significantly every year for the next three years,” said Jeff Janukowicz, research manager for Solid State Storage Technologies at IDC. “The use of leading-edge NAND technology and product innovations, such as in Micron’s RealSSD drives continue to bring SSDs into the mainstream by enabling higher performance and lower power consumption in a more cost effective solution.”

Micron is currently working with notebook manufacturers to qualify its new RealSSD drives under the C400 product name. With samples of the RealSSD C400 drives available now, Micron expects mass production to begin in February.

Bringing the drives to business customers and consumers, Crucial, a division of Micron, will begin selling the portfolio under the name, Crucial® m4 SSD. The Crucial m4 SSD product line is expected to be available online at crucial.com and through select global channel partners in the first quarter of 2011.

Micron Offering NAND Flash Design to System Solutions

As a NAND developer and manufacturer, Micron is in a unique position to apply proprietary management algorithms to its RealSSD portfolio that yield tremendous performance gains and maintain quality control. Micron continues to push NAND process geometries—the company is currently at 25nm with visibility into several more generations—which brings great benefits to solid-state storage applications including greater capacity and more cost-effective designs.

Micron has unveiled a new NOR flash memory product for automotive applications that brings new 65nm NOR flash device to market. The NOR flash is 512Mb and is sampling right now with mass production set to commence in 2011.

The memory is built using a 65nm process and has a parallel interface that is compliant with automotive industry standards and meets all the flash memory requirements for components suitable for use in automobiles. More memory that is faster will make it easier for car builders to give us more interactive applications and features inside the car that need lots of fast memory to operate.

This new SSD is sampling now in limited quantities and Micron says it will be in full production starting in Q1 2010. I guess we can assume boards needed to take advantage of the SSDs will be on the market then too.

Micron will offer the SSDs in 2.5-inch and 1.8-inch form factors for notebooks and desktop systems. The new SSDs promise a read throughput of up to 355MB/s and a wire throughput of up to 215MB/s. Micron reports that on the PC Mark Vantage benchmark the new SSDs scored 45,000.

Video comparison demos after the cut

Micron credit the speed on their use of 34nm ONFI 2.1 high-speed synchronous MLC NAND flash memory, which the C300 is the first SSD to use.  It’s too early to see how the true performance benchmarks rack up – the C300 goes on sale at some point in Q1 2010 – but Micron have pushed out some demo videos below comparing the new SSD to a standard HDD and to one of their competitors’ SSDs.

What we don’t yet know is how much the RealSSD C300 will cost, and that’s likely to be eye-watering.  There’s also something of a shortage of SATA 6Gbps motherboards to use it with, certainly in comparison with SATA 3Gbps boards, but happily the C300 is backward compatible with the older standard.

Micron RealSSD C300 vs. HDD—Everyday Tasks:

Fastest Client SSD: Micron RealSSD C300 vs. Leading Competitor:

Mass production of the chip is expected to begin in Q4 2009, allowing OEMs to produce smaller devices at more cost-effective prices.  Micron and Intel will announce their 2xnm technology later on in the year, even smaller memory that will enable more compact and efficient devices.

Press Release:

INTEL, MICRON ACHIEVE INDUSTRY’S MOST EFFICIENT NAND PRODUCT USING 3-BIT-PER-CELL TECHNOLOGY

Companies Hit Manufacturing Milestone Taking Advantage of 34-Nanometer NAND Process, To Deliver 32-Gigabit Density

SANTA CLARA, Calif. and BOISE, Idaho, Aug. 11, 2009 – Intel Corporation and Micron Technology Inc. today announced the development of a new 3-bit-per-cell (3bpc) multi-level cell (MLC) NAND technology, leveraging their award-winning 34-nanometer (nm) NAND process. The chips are typically used in consumer storage devices such as flash cards and USB drives, where high density and cost-efficiency are paramount.

Designed and manufactured by IM Flash Technologies (IMFT), their NAND flash joint venture, the new 3bpc NAND technology produces the industry’s smallest and most cost-effective 32-gigabit (Gb) chip that is currently available on the market. The 32Gb 3bpc NAND chip is 126mm². Micron is currently sampling and will be in mass production in the fourth quarter 2009. With the companies’ continuing to focus on the next process shrink, 3bpc NAND technology is an important piece of their product strategy and is an effective approach in serving key market segments.

“We see 3bpc NAND technology as an important piece of our roadmap,” said Brian Shirley, vice president of Micron’s memory group. “We also continue to move forward on further shrinks in NAND that will provide our customers with a world-leading portfolio of products for many years to come. Today’s announcement further highlights that Micron and Intel have made great strides in 34-nanometer NAND, and we look forward to introducing our 2xnm technology later this year.”

“The move to 3bpc is yet another proof point to the remarkable progress Intel and Micron have made in 34-nm NAND development,” said Randy Wilhelm, Intel vice president and general manager, Intel NAND Solutions Group. “This milestone sets the stage for continued silicon leadership on 2xnm process that will help decrease costs and increase the capabilities of our NAND solutions for our customers.”

The upshot of that is a claimed 20-percent  reduction in power usage, when compared to “standard” 1.5V memory modules, but still with the same performance improvements from DDR3.  Bandwidth remains at 1,333 megabits per second.

Micron are now working with NVIDIA to validate the new RAM for use with their processors; given one of the company’s most recent announcements has been the Tegra platform for Smartbooks, which boast 1080p-delivering performance while still promising extended battery life, it doesn’t seem all that surprising that they’re interested in low-power memory.  The first 2GB Micron DDR3 chips are available now; 4GB versions will begin sampling in the fall.

Today Micron Technology Inc announced a serial NAND flash memory technology, providing embedded applications with the flexibility to easily upgrade their storage capacity. With storage space starting at 1Gb, Micron’s serial NAND flash allows users to easily upgrade storage capacity beyond what is currently available with serial NOR flash, with a significant cost-per-bit advantage.

Items such as WiMAX devices, set-top boxes, printers and other industrial and automotive applications now contain more sophisticated operating systems for managing multimedia, photos and other data-intensive content, which are driving the need for these devices to contain greater storage capacity. This technology allows for improved performance, allowing users to expand their application storage capacity without having to perform a complete system redesign.

“Micron’s serial NAND offers the lowest cost-per-bit serial interface flash on the market,” said Kevin Kilbuck, director of NAND market development for Micron. “There are several embedded applications today that require 128 megabytes or more of storage, and we expect capacity to continue to grow, providing the need for a NAND-based storage alternative to NOR flash.”

Micron’s serial NAND uses the same package type as parallel NAND, also allowing users to move from serial into parallel NAND interfaces whenever you like. Micron Serial NAND is compatible with the industry SPI. Micron’s 1Gb serial NAND technology is expected to release in the first quarter of 2009. Higher density serial NAND flash ranging up to 4Gb will be available in early 2009.

Call me impressed! Performance exceeds 200,000 input/output operations per second. It also requires that the current Serial ATA II 300MB/s bandwidth cap be released with a PCI Express. During a demo video, the SSDs are mounted on cards and these managed to top 800MB/s.

Currently, the fastest SSD you can buy only reach 250MB/s and the fastest hard drive, the Western Digital Velociraptor, reaches 100MB/s. Supposedly, a production version of this super fast SSD will be released in the near future, though there’s no word on pricing or a specific release date. In the meantime, check out the video demo below:

Intel’s drives will be available both in 32GB and 64GB sizes, but also the more unusual 80GB and 160GB sizes.  Both 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch versions will be sold, with 240 MB/s read rates and 70-170 MB/s write rates.

Pricing for the drives is still unknown.  The 80GB drive is expected to be available sometime this quarter, while the 160GB version won’t be released until Q1 2009.

[via TGDaily]

The P200 range, meanwhile, is targeted at servers and other enterprise applications, prioritizing access speeds over raw capacity.  All 2.5-inch in size, the drives range from 16GB to 128GB in size but, thanks to their use of SLC flash, have matching 250MB/s read and write speeds.  According to Micron, the P200 range requires a tenth of the power of traditional HDDs and need almost no cooling.

The C200 range will begin shipping in 32GB to 256GB capacities in the Fall, both as part of assembled systems and as aftermarket upgrades.  External storage using the drives should show up at the same time, under the Lexar banner.  The P200 range will launch at the same time.  Neither drives have been priced as of yet.

[via Electronista]