Thursday, December 22, 2005
This year saw the announcement of the plan to create yet another joint venture manufacturing company — IM Flash Technologies LLC — which will supply its parents, Intel and Micron with NAND type flash memory.
The model is not new. It echoes the creation of a joint venture flash memory manufacturing partner by Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Fujitsu Ltd. many years ago. What is surprising is that Intel, the world’s largest chip maker feels it necessary to make such a move rather than owning its own plant.
However, the simple truth is that Intel, the inventor and pioneer of flash memory technology, has been outpaced in the flash memory market by Asian rivals. It was a leader in the NOR-style of memory that is frequently used for bootstrap memory or to hold a program. What it did not see, or address significantly, was the dramatic rise in NAND memory which is used to contain data.
The NAND has manifested itself strongly in MP3 players, such as the iPod shuffle and many similar machines, but it is clear that flash memory could soon bring its non-volatile memory benefits to just about every piece of mobile equipment as well as so-called entertainment PCs.
By: DocMemory
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