Status of New and Emerging Memories (Mark Webb, MKW Ventures Consulting LLC)
We have a Future of Memory and Storage/Flash Memory Summit
Paper that we are presenting showing how chiplets change the equation on adding
different types of memory to products. It allows designers to trade off cost
and performance characteristic with more knobs. MRAM, NOR, DRAM, all on the
same chip in the desired proportion with different processes.
Our presentation is “Memory Technologies : How Chiplets
Change Everything”
FMS OMEM-203-1 Heterogeneous Solutions for Performance
Session - Wed Aug 7, 3:00pm - 4:05pm Ballroom C
That said, we need to reiterate the opinion, backed by data,
that emerging memories will not emerge to any material impact on the DRAM or
NAND Market. Unlike some peoples predictions, the emerging memory market will not be $30B or
even $3B in the next 5-10 years. It is well below $300M today
Emerging memories are possible in 3 areas:
- Niche products (which we will show can be integrated in a chiplet product)
- Embedded In a foundry process from TSMC or Global or Intel
- High volume IF they require minimal (<10% of steps) changes to a NAND or DRAM flow.
Fourth Option: They stagnate due to technical issues and lack of demand.
Costs for Memory Technologies
Quick Summary:
MRAM (STT): Available today. In embedded, replacement for E-flash
if you need advanced process and embedded memory. Niche applications as
discrete. Those applications will increase with chiplet use.
RRAM: Available today. May scale differently than MRAM and typically is slower. But has applications depending on cost scaling. Embedded, Chiplets, Niche applications. Some AI weighting use
PCM (1T1R): Available today.This is lower density (<1Gbyte).
A technology that 50+ years old …. Typically used by companies who love PCM
(ST, IBM, Micron) as they have decades of history of characterization.
Crosspoint technologies (1TnR): Optane fully developed the
worlds best and most dense “faster than NAND, cheaper than DRAM” technology.
The economics didn’t work and the demand was 10x lower than anticipated. Intel
and Micron gave it a huge effort and we all appreciate the attempt. It’s not
clear how to get these technologies to high volume IF they worked well.
FeRAM (high density): Was a potential future due to ability
to integrate with DRAM flow. However all memory companies worked extensively on
Hf based FeRAM products since 2020 and none were productized due to a variety
of reasons.
Other New Materials: UltraRAM, New PCM materials, New RRAM
materials/companies etc: These are possible but are 10 years from potential production. Unless
implemented with 3D DRAM in 2028-2030, these are lower probability at this
point. Our presentation on our website of “Memory technology Product Lifecycle” give
detailed timeline of how new memories come to production
Summary: There is no universal memory coming. We have SRAM, DRAM, NAND, NOR, MRAM, RRAM, PCM available today. Lets focus on integrating those as embedded or in chiplets.
I will be in Santa Clara Aug 5-8. Call or text to set up
meetings at FMS or by Zoom. We will host some Zoom sessions during the conference
timeframe. I can address all of the technologies one by one with costs and applications
Lots More info on our website www.mkwventures.com
Mark Webb
MKW Ventures Consulting LLC
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