Micron’s IM Flash Doubles Storage Capacity of Nanochip
Lehi » The IM Flash Technologies digital memory chip plant in Utah rushed to the forefront of its industry with the announcement Monday of a new process that doubles the storage capacity of its products.
But for how long will the competitive lead last in a field where the capacity of the chips doubles about every 18 months as companies are able to cram more and more memory on a small, rectangular silicon wafer.
Micron Technology Inc. and Intel Corp. said they have begun production for testing of the world’s smallest flash memory chip at their joint plant in Lehi.
The announcement represents a big leap ahead in the fiercely competitive market for the chips that store photos, songs and videos in cameras, media players, smart phones and other consumer devices.
“This obviously gives us the leading-edge technology,” said David Baglee, co-executive officer of IM Flash Technologies. “This is how you stay in business.”
Investors take note. “This is how you stay in business,” and it assures additional profits for Micron Technology.
Alan Niebel, CEO of Web-Feet Research of Monterey, Calif., said IM Flash’s intention to start shipping the new chips by the second quarter probably means it will have the industry’s smallest chip with the most capacity for at least six months. Announcements by Toshiba and Sandisk about their work on a similar-sized chip are expected soon.
A chip shortage expected to last into next year will keep profits up, Niebel said, “which means good profits coming back to this plant.”
The Lehi plant employs about 1,500 workers, and though employment is not expected to increase as the new chips are produced, analysts think production could help secure jobs for some time.
Rod Morgan, co-executive of IM Flash Technologies with Baglee, said much of the new technology’s impact on the plant will be on “the organization, the people will be very proud of the fact we are leading” the market.
The new chip holds 8 gigabytes of memory, or enough for 2,000 songs, or 7,000 photos or eight hours of video. It will fit through the hole of a CD but has 10 times the memory capacity. It has about the twice storage capacity of the discs that IM Flash now produces, which were leading technology when they were introduced in 2008.
“In a given space, our customers will be able to provide double the density, double the storage capacity of our prior generation,” said Thomas Rampone, vice present of Intel’s technology and manufacturing group.
Intel and Micron gave analysts and journalists tours of the Lehi plant and a briefing on the new technology last week before Monday’s announcement.
Jim Handy, chief analyst at Objective Analysis of Los Gatos, Calif., said the biggest factor in the flash memory business is the cost of production of memory measured in gigabytes.
“By doing this they’re going to be able to lower their cost per gigabyte by almost half,” he said. “It’s just an astounding jump.”
With the new chip, the Lehi plant can double the number of gigabytes it produces. “There’s the shining star of having the industry’s most advanced process here,” Handy said.
The new devices are known as 25-nanometer chips. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter, with 25 nanometers about 3,000 times smaller than a human hair.
The measurement in nanometers refers to the manufacturing process in which memory cells are placed in very tiny spaces on silicon wafers. The smaller that manufacturers can make that dimension, the more memory capacity each wafer contains and the cheaper the cost per amount of data storage.
Intel and Micron’s current flash memory chip is a 34-nanometer version.
“Twenty-five nanometers is something pretty special here, not just in the [flash memory] world but frankly in the entire semiconductor world,” said Brian Shirley, vice president of memory for Micron Technology, which has headquarters in Boise. “You’re not going to find a more advanced process in production anytime soon.”
