By Don Clark
SAN FRANCISCO-- Intel Corp. and Micron Technology Inc. say they
developed a new breed of memory chips that could bring dramatic
performance gains to computers, smartphones and other kinds of
high-tech products.
The companies say the forthcoming chips will be up to 1,000
times faster than the NAND flash memory chips now used in most
mobile devices, while storing 10 times more data than dynamic
random access memory, or DRAM, chips that are another mainstay of
electronics hardware.
Their technology--dubbed 3D Xpoint--doesn't quite match the
speed of the chips known as DRAMs. But unlike those chips--and like
NAND flash memory--the new chips will retain data even after
they're powered off, the companies say.
"This is a whole new paradigm," said Mark Adams, Micron's
president, predicting the technology will cause "a major
disruption" in the $78.5 billion memory-chip market.
Intel and Micron executives predict the new chips' speed will
spur new kinds of applications and greatly benefit others,
particularly those that rely on finding patterns in large amounts
of data, like voice recognition, financial fraud detection and the
study of genes.
But the importance--and originality--of the technology may be
hotly debated. Plenty of other companies have claimed significant
advances in memory chips in recent years.
Sylvain Dubois, vice president of strategic marketing and
business development at startup Crossbar Inc., said Intel and
Micron seem to be emulating elements of its resistive RAM
technology. "It sounds very much like what we have," he said.
Others, like Everspin Technologies Inc., believe they have a
head start in delivering DRAM-class speed on chips that provide
persistent data storage.
Intel, the Silicon Valley giant better known for microprocessor
chips, has been collaborating with Micron on NAND technology since
2006. Micron, an Idaho-based company that also makes DRAMs,
recently has been the focus of a $23 billion takeover offer
prepared by the Chinese state-owned company Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd.
Micron has declined to comment on the matter.
Memory is a big market. About $78.5 billion worth of DRAM and
NAND chips will be purchased in 2015, the research firm IDC
estimates.
One force behind recent innovations in digital memory is the
diminishing return produced by the conventional way of boosting
storage capacity: shrinking the size of circuitry on chips. Makers
of NAND chips, including Intel and Micron, have said they would
stop pursuing that tactic in favor of stacking layers of circuitry
in three dimensions.
Intel and Micron aren't revealing some technology details,
including some materials they are using or the pricing of their
initial chips. They expect to start delivering sample quantities
from a jointly owned factory in Utah later this year, two-layer
chips that store 128 gigabits of data, matching some existing NAND
chips. They plan to boost capacities later by stacking more
circuitry.
Hardware designers wanting to exploit the technology have to
ponder some choices. They could make equivalents of the solid-state
drives that are currently made using NAND flash chips. But those
devices use connections that would allow only a tenfold speedup
over existing products, Intel and Micron said.
More speed gains can be harnessed if the chips are connected
directly to microprocessors, using the same connections as DRAMs.
Though designers could theoretically use the new chips alone,
Micron and Intel think they will accompany a variety of other
chips.
"This is not a replacement technology," said Rob Crooke, an
Intel senior vice president. "This is an invention that opens up
new sorts of applications."
Marion Morales, an IDC analyst briefed on the technology, said
assessing its true merits will take until 2016 or 2017. One
potential hurdle is the fact that only Intel and Micron will make
the new chips; most prior memory chip markets have begun with more
suppliers, reducing the risk to customers if one line of products
faces technical or manufacturing problems.
Some industry executives said Micron and Intel are among the few
companies with the manufacturing prowess to reassure customers.
Their commitment to produce the new chips is a more significant
statement than a research breakthrough, said Bob O'Donnell, an
analyst at Technalysis Research. "That, to me, is the big story,"
he said.
Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com
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