Semiconductor Memory News

JULY 15th, 2005

AMD’s Microprocessor Sales See Record Quarter – Dual Core Processor Sees 89 Percent Growth - Memory Grows Sequentially

AMD (NYSE:AMD) with its financial report for the second quarter of its 2005 year reported that its microprocessor sales reached record levels. According to Robert J. Rivet, CFO at AMD, "Our microprocessor business delivered another record quarter driven by increased demand for AMD server and mobile processors from our largest global OEM customers. Once again we continued to gain momentum with microprocessor sales growth increasing 38 percent compared to the second quarter of 2004. The solid overall demand was enhanced by our newer processor offerings. Strong Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor sales contributed to an 89 percent revenue increase in our server products from the prior quarter. This demonstrates the acceptance of the AMD64 platform by enterprise customers. Likewise, the AMD Turion64 processor captured more than 60 design wins and drove record mobile sales in the thin-and-light mobile PC category."

He also indicated that AMD’s overall memory and MirrorBit flash memory sales also increased, "Memory Products Group sales increased slightly in the quarter, driven by record MirrorBit Flash memory sales and overall higher unit demand." AMD reported also that MirrorBit Flash memory sales increased to over 20 percent of total Memory Products Group sales in the second quarter, driven by demand from the wireless market and 110 nanometer MirrorBit chips. For the year-over-year period, however, AMD’s Memory Products Group sales decreased. For the second quarter of 2005, memory sales were $462 million, a drop of 31 percent when compared to the second quarter of 2004, but a 3 percent increase from $447 million posted in the first quarter of 2005.

Overall, total sales for the second quarter of 2005 were $1.260 billion, compared to $1.227 billion in the first quarter of 2004 and $1.262 billion in the second quarter of 2005.

Computation Product Group sales, which include AMD’s microprocessors, were $767 million in the second quarter of 2005 compared to $750 million in the first quarter of 2005 and $558 million in the second quarter of 2004. AMD expects that microprocessor sales’ growth will exceed normal seasonal patterns. The company did not reflect on prospects for memory chips sales due to the SEC filing of Spansion, a joint venture of AMD and Fujitsu.

MAY 18th, 2005

STMicroelectronics to Downsize, 3000 to Exit - To Exclude Asia

STMicroelectronics (NYSE:STM) on the heels of a disappointing earnings report, has now made restructuring plans, which once completed, are expected to save $90 million a year. The plan as announced will eliminate 3,000 jobs by the middle of 2006. The company indicated that the layoffs will not include employees at its Asian locations.

STMicroelectronics for the first quarter of 2005 reported net revenues of $2,083 million down 10.3 percent from $2,328 million reported in the fourth quarter of 2005, and up 2.6 percent from the $2.029 reported in the first quarter of 2004. STMicroelectronics, however reported that year-over-year automotive and wireless applications revenue grew at double digit rates year over year and that data storage products grew in the high single digit rate.

For the first quarter of 2005, STMicroelectronics divisional sales included $1,188 million from its Application Specific Product Groups (ASPD), $457 million form its Microcontroller, Linear and Discrete Group (MLD), $421 million from its Memory Products Group (MPG) and $17 million from its other group. This compares to $1,161 million for ASPD, $420 million for MLD, $431 million for MPG and $17 million for the others group in the first quarter of 2004. For the fourth quarter of 2004, revenue for the ASPD group was $1,329 million, for MLD was $494 million, for MPG was $486 million and for the others group, $18 million.

MAY 10th, 2005

STMicroelectronics and Hynix Begin Construction of Joint 300 mm Wafer Fab in China - to Produce Memory Chips

Hynix ST Semiconductor Ltd., the new name of the China based joint wafer fab venture between Hynix Semiconductor and STMicroelectronics, is under construction and is scheduled to begin production in 2006. The facility will eventually include two fabs, one 8 inch and one 12 inch, for the manufacture of DRAMs and NAND flash memory. The 8 inch DRAM facility will be the first to come on line, in first half of 2006, followed by the 12 inch NAND flash fab in the second half of 2006. The total initial investment in the operation comes with a price tag of $2 billion. Hynix will own 67 percent of the facility and STMicroelectronics 33 percent.

Unsubstantiated reports indicate that the DRAM facility will initially produce 20,000 8-inch wafers per month and the NAND flash facility will produce 17,000 wafers per month. Packaging and test are also to be conducted at the site.

MAY 9th, 2005

Hynix Semiconductor Reports Significant Increase in Flash Chip Sales as Total Revenues Slide

Hynix Semiconductor Inc. for its first quarter of 2005, ended March 31, 2005 reported revenue of 1,270 billion won, a decrease of 12% from the prior quarter's revenue of 1,450 billion won. Conversely, Hynix stated that income increased 53% to 321 billion won compared to 209 billion won in its last quarter. The company attributed the decline in revenue to a strong decline in DRAM prices despite bit growth and a weak US dollar. At the same time Hynix says that NAND flash memory sales increased significantly because of factory capacity considerations and a more favorable NAND flash market.

On a parent basis, Hynix reported that sequential revenue only declined 4 percent and net income increased 70 percent.

MAY 6th, 2005

Lexar Media Achieves Quarterly Run Rate of $232 Million - Up 41%

Lexar Media, Inc. (NASDAQ: LEXR) has begun to carve out a share of the flash memory market. With the announcement of first quarter revenue of $232.4 million the company is in range of the $1 billion annual revenue mark, that is if the market holds. Eric Stang, Chairman, CEO and President, Lexar, indicated that product pricing may stand in the way for the near term, "Looking at the second quarter, we see pricing pressures have now re-emerged as a major competitive issue as we see certain competitors moving to reduce prices aggressively in the marketplace. As a result of this uncertainty, our visibility is limited, and we are providing only a general outlook for the second quarter. We anticipate second quarter revenues to be approximately $200 million and a net loss for the quarter due primarily to price reductions and price protection obligations as well as ongoing legal expenses." The fortunes of Lexar depend to a degree on its law suit with Toshiba, a major competitor in the flash market. A hearing to be held on May 16, 2005 will determine whether or not an injunction against Toshiba will be imposed. Although Lexar won a major settlement with Toshiba, Toshiba has indicated it will appeal.

For the first quarter, Lexar revenues increased 41% from $164.7 million in the same period last year. The first quarter is a 23% sequential increase from $188.5 million in the prior fourth quarter.

APRIL 28th, 2005

Intel Reports Quarterly Revenue Increases - Cellular Processors Double

Intel, the world's leading microprocessor manufacturer, reported quarterly sales of $9,434 million for its latest quarter ended April 2, 2005. This was up from $8,091 million reported for the same quarter a year ago. Intel also indicated that year-over-year its microprocessor revenue was $6,895 million, up from $6,150 million a year ago, but down from $6,993 million reported for its last quarter. Flash revenue for the latest quarter was also down sequentially to $578 million from $643 million. However flash revenue was up on a year-over-year basis from $417 million. Chipset and board revenue was essentially flat on a sequential basis at $1,961 million, but up from $1,524 million from the same quarter a year ago.

Intel also indicated that in the quarter it logged record shipments of application processors for cellular phones. Intel says that unit sales almost doubled over first quarter of last year. This was attributed to a ramp in volume needed to supply cell phone customers like Motorola, Palm and Samsung. Other major events in the quarter included Toshiba’s selection of Intel's 854 chipset for use in a high definition DVD player, Fujitsu's selection of the Itanium processor for its line of enterprise servers, the introduction of Intel's first 90 nanometer based flash chips and working microprocessor samples of a 65 nanometer based microprocessors - production scheduled for four 300 mm factories in 2006. Intel also introduced its WiMAX chip and announced plans to further develop WiMAX solutions with ZTE, one of China's largest telecom equipment companies. Additionally, Intel plans to conduct WiMAX field trials with Alcatel.

ARPIL 21, 2005

Samsung Develops 4 Gbit NAND Flash for Multimedia Phones

Samsung reports that it has a 4 Gbit NAND devices with a size suitable for the 3G multimedia cellular handset market. The 4 Gbit OneNAND with a size of 11x13x1.4mm, was made possible with a 90 nanometer manufacturing technology, which enables four 1 Gbit OneNAND memory chips to be stacked into a quad die package. The chip is capable of storing 250 sequential photographs with 5 mega pixel resolution or 120 music files. Sustained read data rate is given at 108 MBytes per second and write rate at 10 MBytes per second. The manufacturing process used was developed last November.

Tom Quinn, Senior VP Sales and Marketing for Samsung Semiconductor commented on the memory's expected market impact, "In addition to recently announced advances in next-generation mobile DRAM and multi-chip package (MCP) memory, the new 4Gb OneNAND will help to solidify our leadership position in the rapidly expanding mobile convergence market."

APRIL 14th, 2005

AMD Reports Doubling of 64-bit Microprocessor Sales as Spansion Files IPO

AMD has announced that its microprocessor business has achieved record sales growth. Robert J. Rivet, AMD's CFO gave some of the details, "Our microprocessor business delivered record sales in what is typically a seasonally down quarter, driven by increased sales across all product categories. We continued to gain momentum with year-over-year sales growth of 31 percent, highlighted by AMD Opteron(TM) and AMD Athlon(TM) 64 processor sales, each of which more than doubled from a year ago." He also commented on AMD's performance in the memory market, also for the company's first quarter of 2005, "The NOR Flash memory market continued to experience industry-wide oversupply and strong pricing pressure. We experienced a rise in unit shipments, but our average selling price (ASP) declined significantly, resulting in weaker than expected sales."

Overall for the first quarter of 2005, AMD reported sales of $1.236 billion compared to $1.264 billion in the fourth quarter of 2004. For the Computation Products Group (CPG), which includes microprocessor revenue, AMD reported sales of $750 million, which is up 31 percent from the first quarter of 2004 and three percent from the fourth quarter 2004 levels of $730 million. The growth in microprocessor sales was attributed to record high server and mobile processor sales and the greater China market. AMD also indicated that AMD64 processor sales grew a record 30 percent sequentially and represented 63 percent of CPG sales. Additionally, AMD indicated operations improvements. AMD's manufacturing process transition from 130 nanometers to 90 nanometers was ahead of schedule and yields were higher than anticipated. Other events in the quarter included new server and enterprise customers. AMD lists these new customers as Akamai, Cable & Wireless, EDS, Goodyear, Honda, Lucas Films, MBNA, MetLife of Mexico and SingTel EXPAN Data Centers.

In the Memory Group sales were however down 29 percent to $447 million from the first quarter of 2004 and down 11 percent from $504 million in the fourth quarter of 2004.

Spansion, which has just filed an IPO with the SEC, and is the NOR Flash venture of AMD and Fujitsu has begun shipments of its 256 Mbit Flash chip to three of the top headset manufacturers, which are heavy users of flash technology. AMD also reported in the quarter that Spansion had begun volume shipments of a 512 Mbit NOR flash chip for embedded applications. Spansion also received Most Valued Partner award from Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. for 2004 and Best Supplier award from Lenova Mobile Communications Technology.

MARCH 30th, 2005

Ramtron Breaks into SRAM, DRAM and Flash 1 MBit Memory Market with Non-Volatile Technology

Ramtron, which has seen sales of its 128Kbit and 64Kbit ferroelectric RAMs rise considerably, has opened another segment of the memory market with the introduction of a 1 MBit device, called the FM20L08 . The 1 MBit device, because it is used to replace DRAMs, SRAMs and Flash EEPROMs, has triple the market power of a standard memory chip. This device, which is SRAM socket compatible has a 128K x 8 nonvolatile structure, an access time of 60 ns, high-speed page mode rated at 33 MHz bus speed for a 4-byte burst and a cycle time of 150 ns. In a 32-pin TSOP the part is priced at $13.65 in quantities of 10,000.

At Ramtron, Mike Alwais, Vice President, FRAM Products stated, ""The new ATD scheme greatly improves the ease of use for design engineers when using our parallel FRAM products. This product drops directly into an SRAM design, allowing the easy replacement of undesirable battery-backed SRAM solutions. The FM20L08 has a diverse target market, and we have seen significant customer interest in samples from end applications such as automotive telematics, set-top boxes, industrial controls, and utility metering."

MARCH 28th, 2005

United States Ban on Toshiba's Chips Looms - Flash Customers Could Also Face Injunctions

Although a jury has found Toshiba, one of the world's largest producer of flash memory chips, liable in a legal case that involves trade theft secrets, Toshiba has stated its intentions to appeal. The damages were serious enough for the jury to award Lexar Media $465.4 million. The amount, a sizable portion of the flash market, included $84 million in punitive damages, The jury found that Toshiba Corp. was not only oppressive, but also fraudulent and malicious.

However the real moment of truth is expected to come on or after April 13th. On that date, a hearing is to be held on an injunction requested by Lexar. Lexar is expected to ask the court to bar Toshiba's flash chips from the United States market. This would include Toshiba's NAND flash chips, and Toshiba's CompactFlash, Secure Digital and xD Picture Card products. If Lexar is successful in its injunction, Toshiba may also see its flash products also banned in other countries in the world.

Toshiba's customers most likely won't be pleased either. If Lexar wins an injunction against Toshiba it could also proceed with legal steps to ban its customers' products from the United States, of which there are very many. Flash chips are found in almost every type of electronic device - from MP3 players to cellular phones. In today's market it is not uncommon for integrated circuit companies to take steps to ensure every possible way for a chip to enter a market is blocked.

Other market leaders in the flash chip market, such as Samsung, Intel, STMicroelectronics and Spansion could see their market shares increase from a worldwide injunction on Toshiba's flash chips. On the other hand, SanDisk, another major flash vendor with annual sales in the order of $1.8 billion, has significant ties with Toshiba. This includes a multibillion joint wafer fabrication venture called Flash Partners, Ltd.

MARCH 24th, 2005

Atmel Reaches 6.4 Billion Serial EEPROM, Serial Flash Mark

As a indication of its presence in the non-volatile market, Atmel announced that it will have produced 6.4 billion serial EEPROM and serial Flash chips as of March 24th, 2005. It took the company 12 years to reach that number. Atmel forecasts that it will double that number in the next five years (or about 1.28 billion units per year or approximately 106 million units per month.

MARCH 16th, 2005

Toshiba and Sandisk Complete Environmental Friendly Wafer Fab

Toshiba and Sandisk plan for their environmentally friendly wafer fabrication facility to enter the production phase in the second half of calendar year 2005. The cost of Fab 3 is expected to rise to 270-billion yen by the end of March 2007. The fab has been designed to reduce the carbon dioxide and perfluorocarbons from its clean room in the order of 30 percent over the levels of Toshiba's current 200 millimeter wafer clean rooms. The investment costs are shared by Toshiba and Sandisk through their joint venture, Flash Partners, Ltd.

The facility, which was officially opened in late February, called Fab 3, is to produce NAND flash memories on 12 inch (300 millimeter) wafers. By late 2005, the facility is expected to produce 10,000 wafers per month. Plans are to ramp the facility to 40,000 wafers per month by the first half of 2007. The facility has been designed so that it would eventually be able to have a capacity of 62,500 wafers per month.

Initially the wafer fab will produce wafers based on a 90-nanometer (nm) process technology then in the first half of 2006 move to 70 nm and then go all the way down to 55 nm in late 2006. NAND flash based on 70 nm technology is scheduled at the existing Yokkaichi 200 millimeter wafer fab in 2005.

Justifying the investment, Mr. Masashi Muromachi, Corporate Vice President of Toshiba Corporation and President & CEO of Toshiba's Semiconductor Company, indicated, when the plant opened, that the NAND Flash market is expected to see an annual growth rate of 30 percent between 2004 to 2008 and is expected to grow from a 700 billion yen market to 2,100 billion yen market.

The site area of the facility is 24,300 square meters, with a floor area of 113,000 square meters and a clean room area of 34,500 square meters. The site is located at Toshiba's Yokkaichi Operations, which has served as the primary wafer fabrication manufacturing center for Toshiba since 1992. The address there is 800 Yamanoisshiki-cho, Yokkaichi-shi, Mie Prefecture, Japan. The Yokkaichi Operations has about 1,950 employees, a total area of 312,000 square meters and a building area of 180,000 square meters, which does not include the 24,300 square meters of the new Fab 3 facility. The facility in 2005 is managed by the General Manager Jiro Ooshima.

MARCH 2, 2005

Catalyst's Mixed Signal Revenues Continue to Show Sharp Increases

Catalyst Semiconductor (NASDAQ:CATS), a programmable and analog mixed signal fabless semiconductor company reported that its third quarter revenues, ended January 31, 2005, were $13.7 million with a net income of $0.11 million compared to $16.9 million with a net income of $2.4 million for the same quarter in 2004. For the second quarter of its fiscal 2005 year, sales were $15.6 million.

The company indicated that the decline in revenues was attributed to a decrease in unit volumes and average selling prices for its EEPROM chips and a decrease in unit volumes for its Flash products. The company's new analog mixed signal products accounted for about $0.73 million or 5.3 percent of total revenue for the its latest third quarter, which was a significant increase from the $0.55 million recorded in the second quarter of 2005 and the $0.31 million recorded in the third quarter of fiscal 2004. Because of the increases, analog and mixed signal products have risen as a percentage of total sales.

FEBRUARY 15th, 2005

Analog Devices Plans M-Systems Flash for Handset Chips

Analog Devices has verified that M-Systems DiskOnChip multi-level flash memory products are compatible with its SoftFone family of baseband processors. Mark Martin, product line director, Analog Devices Inc. believes that the combination of M-Flash flash products and the SoftFone baseband processors will allow for a very cost-effective solution to the new breed of multimedia phones that are emerging in the marketplace. David Tolub, general manager of M-Systems' mobile division feels that the collaboration is an important step to giving customers the needed memory required for a multimedia phone solution. Request More Information - Specify Company, Product, Etc.

FEBRUARY 2, 2005

China’s Flash Foundry Capacity Funded

Silicon Storage Technology (SST), encouraged by strong demand for flash technology from mainland China’s fabless and chip design houses through its SST China unit, has reported that it has signed a licensing agreement with Nanotech Corporation, a foundry based in Changzhou Hi-Tech region of China. As part of the agreement Nanotech will license SST’s 0.25 micron flash semiconductor process and serve as SST’s China foundry for flash based products. As part of the agreement, SST’s subsidiary, SST International has purchased Series B preferred shares of Nanotech Corp. SST China was established in 2001 to provide memory design services to the China market.

SST is betting on demand for serial flash chips to exceed 500 million units in 2005. Growth will apparently come from optical disk drives, hard disk drives such as one-inch and smaller versions, LCD monitors, LCD TVs, MP3 players. SST plans to rely on its flash foundry partners: Grace Semiconductor, Seiko Epson and TSMC to meet the demand.

FEBRUARY 1, 2005

Kilopass Enters Into Non-Volatile Memory Agreement With Tower

Kilopass Technology Inc. announced that it has entered into an agreement with Tower Semiconductor Ltd, Israel’s primary chip foundry. The agreement was called a foundry technology agreement.

Kilopass provides secure non-volatile memory cores. The memory cores security features differ from standard flash memory cores. The contents of Kilopass XPN memory is considered more secure than flash memory. One of the reasons is that the data in Kilopass’ memory can’t be read even if the chip is reverse engineered.

JANUARY 31, 2005

Fujitsu Reports 7 Percent Drop in Semiconductor Sales

For its third quarter, ended December 31, 2004, Fujitsu’s Electronic Devices division reported that semiconductor revenue fell 7.3 percent from the year ago period. Semiconductor sales were 96.4 Billion Yen in Fujitsu’s third quarter. For the nine month period, semiconductor sales gained 10.5 percent to reach 316.5 billion yen. For its fiscal year, which ends in March 2005, Fujitsu forecasts that its total semiconductor sales will reach 420 billion yen, up 4 percent over last years revenue of 403.9 billion yen. Also for its fiscal year, Fujitsu forecasts that logic chips will make up 72 percent of its total sales, and system memory, which includes flash chips, 28 percent.

The decrease in revenue was attributed to weakness in the company’s flash memory and consumer logic chip products. The division reported, however, that orders of advanced technology increased. Flash chip revenue in Asia was reported as sluggish and flash price declines led to the decline in flash revenue.

Meanwhile, Fujitsu continues with the facilitization of its Mie Prefecture wafer fabrication facility. That facility is on schedule to produce integrated circuits with 90 nm and 65 nm feature lengths on 300 mm wafers. The company also has revised its capital expenditures for its fiscal year downward to 50 billion yen from 55 billion yen. This however is still a 66.1 percent gain from last years 30.1 billion yen spent for semiconductor equipment and factories.

JANUARY 26th, 2005

Kilopass Gets Award for Memory With 1.5 Transistor Cell

EDN magazine selected Kilopass Technology’s nonvolatile memory chip technology as a finalist for its END Innovation Award in the Intellectual Property category. Kilopass offers embedded memory cores, which can be built with a standard CMOS process and uses only 1.5 transistors per memory bit on average. This has given design engineers a way to embed large amounts of memory on logic chips without incurring the large costs associated with traditional embedded memory technology. Kilopass’ embedded memory cells are used to replace on-chip masked ROMS and flash and EEPROM memory that has in the past been placed off chip.