2012 will mark a further acceleration in the use of Flash Memory as a critical computing component. Beyond the tablets, smartphones and enterprise SSDs, NAND and NOR Flash memory are growing and making an impact throughout all our lives at work, on the road, at home and at play. Here are five trends we expect to accelerate this year: Continue reading
Nothing new. That was the conventional wisdom about CES 2012 in Las Vegas. Well, after spending two days last week at the show, I think the conventional wisdom is wrong. There are many new and cool electronic products at the show and they all point to exciting times for Spansion and our customers. Why?
As we close out 2011 and prepare for next year, we decided to look back at the most popular blog posts. We covered a lot of exciting topics this year, including applying Spansion NOR flash to various industry segments, discussing the future trends in flash memory, reporting about the exciting Spansion news and exploring deep technical insights into the systems design using embedded memory.
And our most popular post? Our June 28th blog post on “Femtocells: The Next Billion Dollar Market.” Below is the list of the Top 10 blog posts in order of popularity:
1 – Femtocells: The Next Billion Dollar Market
In my journeys around the world, meeting with the leading providers of the most advanced electronics, I walk away inspired and challenged to find ways we can enable more innovation in their markets. I challenge all of my Spansion colleagues on how we can be a strategic partner to help customers innovate more efficiently and faster – to make a difference in the electronics that touch all of our lives at home, at work, on the go.
Innovation may mean different things to different people – the coolest gadget, solving new design challenges, more jobs, industry recognition and awards. For me, it means leveraging our extensive IP portfolio of more than 2,000 patents on everything from technology, know-how, process methodology and design expertise, to create new markets and new classes of products that solve our customers’ needs and substantially enhance the lives of consumers.
Today we reached a significant milestone in Spansion’s history. After two and half years of litigation, we reached an agreement with Samsung to resolve our differences and settle all ongoing patents. I am extremely proud of our engineers who have worked diligently over the years on developing Spansion’s patent portfolio. Protecting and monetizing our IP is core to Spansion’s growth strategy.
This agreement today validates the strength of our IP portfolio and demonstrates our employees’ determination and smart innovation – two important values of Spansion. We have a strong foundation to build from and we plan to expand our licensing business for both our IP and technology.
Spansion is on a path to enable innovation in next generation electronics. I look forward to innovating with our customers and the industry.
Spansion put more weight behind its Fab-Lite manufacturing strategy by expanding our relationship with Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), China’s largest and most advanced semiconductor foundry. We recently announced that we have extended our current foundry arrangement to expand the 65nm capacity and include the manufacture of Spansion’s 45nm NOR Flash memory.
So why Fab-Lite?
Spansion operates a model that utilizes efficient, low-cost internal manufacturing, augmented with production capacity at third party companies for legacy technology production, cost effective 300mm capacity expansion and advanced technology production capability. Our Austin, TX facility is the core of this flexible manufacturing strategy. We built our foundry network around the capabilities of the Austin fab to include support for legacy and advanced processing nodes. FSET, in Aizu Wakamatsu is our partner for technologies older than 110nm and enables the product longevity Spansion customers require. Texas Instruments, also in Aizu Wakamatsu, provides additional 110nm capacity that is shared with our Austin facility. For more advanced nodes, SMIC provides 65nm (as well as Austin) and now 45nm NOR Flash production.
We can tune our product mix in Austin and leverage our network of foundry partners as needed to fulfill customer demand. Yet, Spansion still maintains our internal manufacturing excellence, providing confidence that our new innovations will seamlessly transition from their prototype stage to full production.
Balancing Demands
Fab-Lite also helps Spansion continually balance the competing demands for its manufacturing facilities. Due to the nature of the customer requirements in the embedded systems marketplace, Spansion product lines have a longer lifespan than you might find from other suppliers.
Spansion also announced that we met our commitment to move into production our 1 Gb and 512 Mb versions of the Spansion GL-S NOR Flash memory. Meeting this commitment, along with our flexible fab strategy allows Spansion to deliver our lastest innovations in a timely manner, meeting our customers embedded system requirements.
Through our Fab-Lite manufacturing strategy, we can effectively satisfy the customer demand for the latest innovations, with the right quality, in production volumes. This approach to manufacturing gives Spansion the capacity and capabilities it needs for the future with a structure that ensures a continual cost reduction path for our customers.
ONFi has recently announced the ONFi 3.0 specification. This new spec will double the speed and bandwidth for future NAND devices, enabling faster and more packed mass storage solutions based on Flash.
I think this is an important milestone, since it enables the industry players to plan for a common long term roadmap, to design their devices to an openly recognized specification and thus form a vibrant ecosystem.
ONFI illustrates the uniqueness of the memory industry. On one hand we have to innovate faster in order to stay ahead of the curve. On the other, we have to keep an eye on the past, in order be compatible with existing solutions. We need to cooperate with other ecosystem players but also compete with them to succeed in the market. In the area of NAND Flash memory, ONFI brings us together.
We have seen a strong momentum for NAND Flash adoption in memory cards, USB drives and mass storage. This means that device manufacturers, controller providers, software and system architects need to work quickly and closely together to enable new applications for emerging markets… and at the same time, compete to win.
Open standards are a way to facilitate this process. In the software world we have seen Linux, Android and other open source projects take off and be pervasive forces in our society.
The ONFi (Open NAND Flash Interface) Workgroup is an organization that promotes standards for NAND Flash memory. Membership is open and more than 100 companies with system, software and component background have now joined ONFi. Spansion is one of 7 board members leading this organization as well as Intel, Sony, Micron, Hynix, Phison, and SanDisk.
Personally, as the Spansion representative and ONFi Board member, I have been privileged to work with such a group and take part in these standardization efforts for several years.
After all, even in nature, collaboration and competition are the two driving forces that set the way to evolution and success.