Intel & Micron Show 34-nm, 32-Gbit Flash Memory Chip

Lucas123 writes "IM Flash Technologies, a joint venture between Intel and Micron, announced it has developed a 32-gigabit NAND flash memory chip that is expected to enable the production of cheaper solid-state drives with twice the storage capacity of today's products. The 34-nanometer, multi-level chip is smaller than Intel's latest CPUs. Samples will be available in June with production by the end of the year."

Comments

The Price of Flash

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

FWIW, another article covering this same press-release noted that most flash costs $2.50/Mbit to manufacture, but this new stuff by Intel costs just under $1/Mbit to manufacture. So the rapid downward spiral of flash storage pricing should continue for at least the short term.

Re:The Price of Flash

[j1m 5n0w]

That doesn't sound right. Perhaps you mean $/Gbyte?

Re:The Price of Flash

[John Whitley]

Those prices are insanely high. I'm seeing current retail prices for high speed compact flash cards at 60 to 100 USD for 8GByte (varies with speed, rebates, etc.). Taking one of the lower-end prices for a top-tier part (since I want an upper bound on part manufacturing costs), that works out to a bit less than 0.001 USD per Mbit. Even if those numbers are per Gbit, that still leaves the cited current manufacturing cost at more than twice actual retail.

Re:The Price of Flash

[Kjella]

Probably this:

(...) Jim Handy, an analyst with Objective Analysis (...) "At a die size [they are using], the price of a 32Gb chip will be just shy of $4, which works out to about 99 cents/GB. The companies will be the first to break the $1/GB barrier with this product," Handy said. Today's NAND prices are hovering near $2.50 per gigabyte, Handy said. So an external analyst said thar, nor Intel/Micron. It sounds rather nice if you can get a good boot disk for 1$/GB+margins though. The bulk multimedia will probably still go on HDDs though, but I'd definately get one at those prices.

Re:Phirst Spot

[tirerim]

Because smaller is more energy efficient, which is useful on a number of levels: for one, it saves electricity, and it also means that the chips produce less heat, which lets them run better.

Re:Smaller is bigger

[Anonymous Coward]

smaller is better because smaller is cheaper (higher yield from wafer) and lower power.

Re:Phirst Spot

[SmlFreshwaterBuffalo]

This is already common practice in the industry when you can't get your yield up.

There are two methods that I've seen:

• Redundant cells - extra cells in the array that can be swapped in to replace bad cells
  
• Error-correction - extra cells are used for each word (for example, 12 bits total for every byte), and an algorithm is implemented during the read cycle to determine the correct values
  

The key is determining how much to add. Having too few won't allow you to hit your yield targets, and adding too many is a waste of area (i.e. money). And as you mentioned, products that are more logic intensive don't benefit from this very much.

Having a tight process with great yield is still the best approach (if you can achieve it), though, because you get the great yield with smaller die.

Re:A Bit Of Confusion With Flash Sizes

[SQL Error]

Multiple dies stacked in a single package. Very common in the flash business.

Re:Typo ?

[KillerBob]

I'm going to assume that you actually missed it, and not that it was a facetious remark... if it was, then I apologize.

What you're missing is that this is a single chip. One chip with 32gbit is a 4gbyte single chip. Couple 4 of these on a single thumb drive (and they're small enough to do it), and you've got a 16gbyte USB thumb drive. And it only cost them $16 to build. Well... $20, considering packaging and control chips etc.

Now contrast that against the current cost of a 16GB flash drive. 16GB thumb drives don't exist... the biggest I've seen is 4GB... and 16GB SSDs cost over $200.

Looks like Intel is has big SSD plans

[rrohbeck]

Apparently an SSD will be part of Centrino 2: http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/05/23/intel-bundle-ssds-centrino

Re:Typo ?

[Millenniumman]

. 16GB thumb drives don't exist... Yes they do. They start at like $50.

You can also get 32 GB ones.

and 16GB SSDs cost over $200 That is true, for the most part. I would imagine they are made to a higher quality than thumb drives, or they are just overpriced. Probably both. Certainly, they are ridiculously priced compared to hard drives.

Re:Memory is almost always ahead.

[i.of.the.storm]

I guess you didn't know, but AMD used to have a large flash memory division that was spun off to form the company called Spansion since their main cash cow is processors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD#Corporate_history