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 chips they plan to sell next year 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 DRAM. But unlike those chips--and like NAND flash
memory--the new chips will retain data even after they're powered
off, the companies say.
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
genomics.
"It truly is revolutionary," said Mark Durcan, Micron's chief
executive, at an event here Tuesday.
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 collaborated with Micron on NAND technology since 2006.
Micron, a Boise, Idaho 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 offer.
Besides the financial attractions of the memory market, which
researchers at IDC assess at $78.5 billion this year, manufacturers
have been searching for breakthroughs because of new technical
hurdles to the conventional way of boosting storage capacity by
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 of 3D
Xpoint, including key materials they are using. But they described
what they said is a unique way to store data, using vertical
columns of circuitry linked by a crisscross grid of microscopic
wires.
Among other things, the approach allows cells that store data to
be managed individually; NAND flash chips require entire blocks of
cells to be erased before a single bit is stored, slowing
performance.
"This is something many people thought was impossible," said Rob
Crooke, an Intel senior vice president.
The companies plan initially to manufacture two-layer chips that
store 128 gigabits of data, matching some existing NAND chips. They
plan to boost capacities later by stacking more circuitry.
Analysts attending the event Tuesday said it would take time for
hardware designers to decide how, or whether, to use the
technology. They could make equivalents of the solid-state drives
that currently are made using NAND flash chips. Existing
connections for those devices would allow only a tenfold speedup
over existing products, Intel and Micron said.
More gains in speed can be made as those links are improved, or
if the chips are connected directly to microprocessors, as DRAMs
are. Computer designers theoretically could use the new chips
alone, but Micron and Intel think most systems will combine a
variety of memory chips.
One potential hurdle is the fact that Intel and Micron plan to
keep sole control over the technology, starting production of
samples later this year in a jointly owned factory in Lehi, Utah.
Chip customers tend to prefer technology that comes from multiple
suppliers, reducing the risk if one product line faces technical or
manufacturing problems.
But Micron and Intel are among the few companies with the
manufacturing prowess to reassure customers, said Bob O'Donnell, an
analyst at Technalysis Research, making the new chips more than a
research project. "That, to me, is the big story," he said.
Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com
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