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Micron Constructing New Cleanroom For 3D NAND Fabrication R&D In Singapore

Subject: General Tech | April 9, 2018 - 11:20 PM |
Tagged: micron, manufacturing, IMFT NAND, flash memory, fab, cleanroom, 64-Layer, 3d nand

Micron Technologies recently began construction on a multi-billion-dollar cleanroom facility for research and development of its 3D NAND technologies. The new facility is being built adjacent to Micron’s existing NAND fabrication complex at 1 North Coast Drive where Micron invested $4 Billion to expand in 2016. Micron did not disclose its exact investment in the new cleanroom space except to say that it was a multi-billion-dollar project.

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Micron’s expanded 300mm 3D NAND manufacturing complex is part of its NAND Center of Excellence, and the new facility that is under construction will expand the company’s ability to increase its research and development efforts and allow Micron to push “even more intricate designs” according to Sanjay Mehrotra (Micron President and CEO). for its 3D flash memory. The new facility will be staffed by the new hires which will mainly be engineers and technicians specializing in 3D NAND manufacturing and will include as many as 600 fresh graduates.

Construction of the new manufacturing and cleanroom space is slated for completion in mid-2019 with initial wafer output by the fourth quarter of next year. Unfortunately, this facility is not intended to add additional wafer capacity (at least at this time) so those hoping for increased supply of NAND chips and cheaper SSDs will have to keep waiting. Rather, this facility is going to be used for R&D and its manufacturing will be used to produce more advanced flash and experiment with new manufacturing methods for increasingly complicated stacked and denser die designs instead of beefing up supply of its current memory chips that are being used in current products.

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Satellite view of Micron's existing 300mm NAND fabrication facility in northern Singapore.

Along with the new 3D NAND facility, Micron will be adding 1,000 new jobs to its existing workforce in Singapore of 7,500 over the next five years per a deal with Singapore’s Economic Development Board. Business Times and Channel News Asia note that over the past 20 years Micron has invested heavily in Singapore – north of $20 billion.

I am glad to see Micron pushing forward with its 3D NAND especially following the breakup with Intel wherein the two companies have decided to complete the development of third generation 3D NAND together and then to develop 3D NAND independently. Interestingly, Intel and Micron did not totally dissolve the IMFT joint venture as they will continue collaborating on 3D XPoint at the fab in Lehi, Utah which according to Intel is now entirely focused on XPoint memory. That was something I was curious about when first reading of the breakup early this year and happened to come across when writing this story. That press release notes that Intel and Micron are currently producing second generation 64-layer IMFT flash and developing higher density third generation flash which is slated for production next year (after which Micron and Intel will go their separate ways on NAND), so this may be a major reason for Micron building out new multi-billion-dollar fab space for NAND R&D.

Source: Business Times

NVDIMM: Nonvolatile... Not NVIDIA

Subject: General Tech, Memory, Systems | February 10, 2013 - 03:44 AM |
Tagged: NVDIMM, micron, IMFT NAND, imft

So a RAM chip, a NAND module, and an “ultracapacitor” walk into stick...

This week Micron released a press blast for technology called, “NVDIMM”. The goal is to create memory modules which perform as quickly as DRAM but can persist without power. At this point you could probably guess the acronym: Nonvolatile Dual In-line Memory Module. It has been around for a few years now, but it is in the news now so let's chat about it.

I often like to play the game, “Was this named by an engineer or a marketer?” You can typically tell who was responsible for naming something by gauging how literally it breaks down into a simple meaning versus not having any apparent meaning at all. A good example of an engineer name is UHF, which breaks down into ultra-high frequency because it's higher than VHF, very-high frequency. A good example of a marketing name would be something like “Centrino”, which sounds like the biggest little penny-slot machine in the world. I would quite comfortable guessing that NVDIMM was named by an engineer.

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This is AgigA Tech's module, who provides the capacitors for Micron and their NVDIMMs.

The actual makeup of NVDIMMs is quite sensible: DIMMs are fast but die when the power goes out. You could prevent the power from going out but it takes quite a lot of battery life to keep a computer online for extended periods of time. NAND Flash is quite slow, relative to DIMMs, in normal operation but can persist without power for very long periods of time. Also, modern-day capacitors are efficient and durable enough to keep DIMMs powered for long enough to be copied to flash memory.

As such, if the power goes out: memory is dumped to flash on the same chip. When power is restored, DIMMs get reloaded and continue on their merry way.

According to the Micron press release, the first NVDIMM was demonstrated last November at SC12. That module contained twice as much NAND as it did DIMM memory: 8GB of Flash for 4GB of RAM. Micron did not specify why they required having that much extra Flash memory although my gut instinct is to compensate for write wearing problems. A two-fold increase to offset NAND that had just one too many write operations seems like quite a lot compared to consumer drives. That said, SSDs do not have to weather half of their whole capacity being written to each time the computer shuts down.

Who knows, double-provisioning might even be too little in practice.

Source: Micron

Corsair's new SSD lineup Toggles between Marvell and SandForce models

Subject: Storage | June 14, 2012 - 06:28 PM |
Tagged: corsair, toggle NAND, IMFT NAND, performance series, Marvell 9174

Corsair's 256GB Performance Pro SSD is the member of the Performance series which utilizes Toshiba Toggle NAND and the Marvell 9174 controller.  At $340 it is a little more expensive than some other comparable drives, however that may be well deserved for after their testing [H]ard|OCP put this drive in the same category as the Intel 520 in general performance.  In fact during some tests they found it to be faster than the lauded Intel SSD, which is no mean feat.  That performance, along with a solid three year warranty helped Corsair pick up a Silver Award from [H].

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"Today we review the 256GB Corsair Performance Pro SSD. Corsair provides enthusiasts with both sides of the SSD controller coin by offering both Marvell and SandForce controlled SSDs in its product lines. Today we will take a look at the Marvell powered 256GB SSD and the Toshiba Toggle NAND that Corsair has chosen for it."

Here are some more Storage reviews from around the web:

Storage

 

Source: [H]ard|OCP