AMD's flash division, Spansion, plans to announce a new generation of its MirrorBit flash memory chips for cell phones and networking equipment. These new chips, the company says, will help expand its new and unusual lead in the sector over old rival Intel.

Since the inception of Spansion, the joint venture of AMD and Fujitsu, AMD vaulted past Intel in terms of ;market share, according to some estimates.

The company has continued to grow by taking customers away from Intel, in part by keeping costs lower, said Bertrand Cambou, CEO of Spansion

In the NOR segment of the flash market, AMD accounted for 24 percent of production last year, compared with 23 percent for Intel, according to iSuppli. In 2004, the research company estimates that AMD will be at 28 percent and Intel at 17 percent. AMD, by its own estimates, says it has passed Intel in market share for flash memory in cell phones, 42 percent to 25 percent.

Additionally, the cost and performance of the new MirrorBit chips should help AMD land design wins that would normally go to NAND flash makers like Samsung and Toshiba.

The new chips will still contain two bits per cell but will hold up to 256 megabits and contain a number of performance enhancements. In all, the changes will make them dense enough and cheap enough to compete against NAND chips, Cambou said.

In a few years, AMD expects to advance the technology further by coming out with a MirrorBit chip that contains four bits of information per cell, which will again double the density of the memory.

By: DocMemory
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