The Future of Flash in the Enterprise

Next week is EMC World, and Micron will be at the event talking about the advantages of Flash in the enterprise. Gearing up for the event, I had the chance to sit down with Ed Doller (our VP of Enterprise Storage Solutions) and Mark Sorenson (EMC’s senior VP of Flash products and technologies) to shed some light on this topic. Take a look at the video below to see what they had to say. Also, next week we’ll publish another video discussing the collaboration between the two companies.

Don’t Miss Micron’s Take on DRAM and NAND Markets

Want to learn more about changing DRAM and NAND markets? The VPs of Micron’s NAND and DRAM solutions groups are presenting at two financial conferences this week. Don’t miss your chance to listen to the latest updates on memory and storage trends and how Micron is driving memory architecture.

Jefferies 2012 Global TMT Conference
Tuesday, May 8, 9:30 a.m. ET
Who: Brian Shirley, VP & GM of Micron’s DRAM Solutions Group
Topic: DRAM segment and technology trends, Micron’s presence in infrastructure space, and future memory trends.
Audiocast:
http://investors.micron.com/eventdetail.cfm?EventID=110347&calendarid

Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2012 Global Technology Conference
Wednesday, May 9, 2:45 p.m. PT
Who: Glen Hawk, VP of Micron’s NAND Solutions Group
Topic: Global NAND market outlook, trends driving new storage consumption, and Micron’s silicon-to-systems strategy.
Audiocast:
http://investors.micron.com/eventdetail.cfm?EventID=110348&calendarid

Audio from the sessions will also be archived on Micron’s Investor Relations website (investors.micron.com) and available for replay later.

X Marks the Spot for Avnet’s Technical Training Road Show

We’re ready to hit the road for X-fest 2012, Avnet and Xilinx’s 22-city tour that takes free technical training to FPGA, DSP, and embedded system designers around the globe. Our experts will be on-hand to show you how easy it is to integrate our memory into your applications—in fact, you’ll see mix of our DDR3, RLDRAM, and NOR Flash on the KC705, Spartan-6, and K7-MMP FPGA boards that Xilinx will be using for their training demos.

We hope to see you at an X-fest event—we want to answer your memory questions, talk about your challenges, and help you find the solution you need.

And speaking of free, we’re also giving away one 2.5” 1.8GB RealSSD™ C400 drive at every event! Be sure to stop by our booth and drop your business card in the bowl for our random drawing.

In the meantime, get a head start on your learning with our video demonstration for high-end networking—a Xilinx FPGA interfacing to our RLDRAM 3 memory from a couple weeks ago.

20nm NAND: 2011 Semiconductor of the Year

Memory doesn’t always get its due.

It’s a foundational computing element and one of the key reasons everything is smaller, lighter, and faster than it used to be, but it’s usually the processors and end applications that get the credit. So when our JV with Intel pushed NAND to 20nm well ahead of competitors, we didn’t expect broad public acknowledgement. Today, our hardworking R&D teams get a little much-deserved recognition.

After analysis of more than a dozen competing technologies, UBM TechInsights has named Micron and Intel’s 20nm NAND technology Semiconductor of the Year. It’s a huge honor. The Insight Awards have been around for a decade and are highly respected in our industry, in no small part because their analysis is so technically insightful and thorough (see their EETimes Article for a brief sample).

But the award isn’t just interesting for those who can appreciate elegant semiconductor architecture—our breakthrough design has a real impact for end-users. The innovative cell architecture will allow 20nm NAND to closely match the performance and endurance rates of the last generation when it’s fully mature (that’s unheard of for NAND). It’s exactly those features that will drive even greater NAND adoption in the years ahead—and that’s the mark of a truly great technology.

Read the Press Release, learn more about our NAND process technology, or watch the video below for highlights from this morning’s awards ceremony.

Will mSATA and Ultrabook™ devices make your mom want an SSD?

If you’re reading this blog, there’s a good chance you’re pretty savvy about solid state drives; you might even own one (or a few). If you do, you’ve probably tried to tell your less-techie friends and family why they should replace their hard drive with an SSD—and you know that the general population still doesn’t quite get it. That slow public acceptance is true for almost any technology—there needs to be a defining change that sparks the imagination of the average person. When that happens, they may not be any closer to understanding how the technology works (plasma TVs are a great example of this), but they know they want it, and they know why. For SSDs, I think we’re right on the cusp of that breakthrough.

Here’s why:

Reason 1: mSATA SSDs will open new PC design potential
We announced an update to our C400 RealSSD™ product line this week; the addition of an mSATA form factor. Micron’s mSATA is built on the architecture of our existing C400 drive, so it delivers the same high performance and Micron reliability. What’s different is the size—it’s about a third the size of a business card, so it weighs just 10 grams, and there’s no case. What’s great about mSATA is that it’s finally unleashing the full potential of SSDs. Up to now, most SSDs have been sold in a 2.5” case—a form factor that was built to make SSDs fit into hard drive slots. With mSATA, we have a standardized form factor that minimizes the storage footprint, allowing for sleeker, high performance laptop designs.

Reason 2: Ultrabook™ platforms will make SSD benefits apparent to average users
If you haven’t seen many ultrathin laptops, you will very soon. Intel launched a massive ad campaign about the platform this weekend, and a lot of other OEMs are creating their own ARM-based or AMD versions of the same concept. While features vary, they share a few general design targets:
• High-performance, instant-on responsiveness
• Slim industrial design
• Ultra-mobile: Lightweight and durable
• Long battery life

All of these features depend (at least in part) on the key benefits that an SSD provides. When consumers buy these new systems, they’ll be introduced to the advantages of solid-state storage. And if you’ve used a laptop with a good SSD, you know that they won’t want to go back to a hard drive—the user experience is just that much better.

The market data we’re projecting supports that growth. As you can see from the charts below, our analysts see ongoing gains for mobile computers, especially tablets and ultrathin devices. Even more interesting is how disproportionately these two categories will drive NAND shipments, largely because tablets and ultrathins depend on the size, power, and performance benefits of Flash storage to do what they do. Needless to say, it’s a great time to be at the world’s leading NAND developer; I’m excited about what’s coming on our roadmaps and how new products like the C400 mSATA will bring the benefits of Flash based storage to an even wider audience.

So a year from now, when your mom asks you what an SSD is, maybe you can simply say, “It’s what makes you like your new computer so much.”

Ultrabook is a trademark of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Next-Gen, High-End Networking

Today, Micron and Xilinx jointly announced our hardware demonstration of an FPGA interfacing to RLDRAM® 3 memory.

For us, this announcement is exciting because it’s a great example of what’s possible when industry leaders collaborate.

More exciting and more important for our mutual customers is that this next-generation Virtex®-7 FPGA/RLDRAM 3 solution raises the bar for high-end networking performance by delivering 60% higher data rate and memory bandwidth than the previous platform (Virtex-6 FPGA/RLDRAM 2).

Check out the video below, where Derek Curd (Xilinx) and I demonstrate the FPGA/RLDRAM 3 memory interface and go over some of the device details that make this such a standout platform for next-gen, high-end networking.

New PCIe Interface is an Enterprise Game-Changer

Today, we announced a new 2.5-inch PCIe SSD form factor. What makes this form factor big news is how the new interface is going to be used. Our SSD has been selected as a key storage device in Dell’s PowerEdge 12th generation servers, which use innovative, front-accessible backplane designs that accommodate 2.5-inch SATA, SAS, or PCIe devices, so customers can choose the right combination of data storage and caching devices to suit their needs.

These new servers and our 2.5-inch PCIe SSD represent a revolutionary change for the enterprise industry because they enable scalable, hot-swappable, performance upgrades. Customers can easily service the drive or scale performance without powering down the server—a luxury that isn’t possible with existing PCIe card solutions. Not surprisingly to us, this new PCIe form factor is already getting noticed and generating interest.

In the video below, I provide a quick explanation of the interface and the serious impact we think it will have on enterprise architectures in the near future.

Steve Appleton 1960-2012

We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Appleton, Micron Chairman and CEO, passed away this morning in a small plane accident in Boise. He was 51. Our hearts go out to his wife, Dalynn, his children and his family during this tragic time.

Steve’s passion and energy left an indelible mark on Micron, the Idaho community and the technology industry at large.

Read Steve’s Bio

Read the Press Release

The Micron family truly appreciates the overwhelming support from the semiconductor industry and communities around the globe on the passing of our visionary and beloved leader.

We would like to invite you to share your memories of Steve or provide condolences by commenting on this post.

Memorial Service Details

An Engineer’s Dream Come True: HMC named “Best Technology of 2011”

When you’ve invested a lot of hours and hard work into developing a new technology, it’s rewarding when your labors get noticed. That’s why we were especially excited when our Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) received some really BIG attention, The Linley Group’s Analysts’ Choice Award for “Best Technology of 2011.”

HMC has been in development since 2006 and represents the combined efforts of three cross-functional teams: logic layer designers, DRAM design engineers, and our advanced packaging team. These teams were challenged to think beyond the evolutionary path of memory and focus on developing a technology that would overshoot industry expectations in terms of raw bandwidth and energy efficiency—an engineer’s dream come true!

One of the more unusual challenges we faced was how to test HMC—its performance is literally off the scale, which means there’s no existing infrastructure that would be able to measure the remarkable specs it delivers. So we designed HMC to measure itself, literally—the testing capability is built right into the chip.

Now that we’re moving from the prototype stage toward actual production of this revolutionary product, the HMC Consortium (HMCC) is leading the effort to create in industry-adoptable standard and bring HMC to market.

More information:
Read the press release about HMC’s “Best Technology of 2011” award.
Learn more about HMC technology
Find out about the HMC Consortium at hybridmemorycube.org

Controlling Complexity with ClearNAND™ Flash

One of our existing NAND customers, Maryland-based Data Design Corporation, specializes in custom electronic designs for national laboratories, defense, and industrial applications. Their engineers had a great idea for a custom PCIe storage device. But they had a problem—standard NAND ECC requirements have been changing with each generation resulting in expensive reengineering of the NAND controller in order to keep pace with the most advanced NAND.

Watch our interview with Data Design’s Director of Engineering Richard Baum to see the high-performance SSD they brought to market with our Enhanced ClearNAND™ Flash. Its built-in ECC delivered exactly what they were looking for—smaller footprint, lower power consumption, and 70% less controller complexity.

Or, read the case study.