Samsung - Page 3

The Korean Government has decided to fund STT-RAM research for Hynix and Samsung in a $40 million project. The government will pay around half of the sum for the project, which is intended to run till 2014. The project calls for the government to work with Samsung and Hynix together for research and development on STT-MRAM chips. Korea aims to control around 45% of the 30-nano type memory chip market by 2015.

The companies have already opened a new laboratory at Hangyang University's fusion technology center. It is already equipped with a fully operational 300mm magnetic thin film deposition system and other chip-making facilities.

Samsung Electronics announced today that it has begun production of 512Mb Phase-Change Memory (PRAM). It is targeted for mobile devices. It features high-performance and low power. Samsung says that a handset with PRAM can extend its lifetime over 20%.

The 512Mb PRAM can erase 64KWs (kilowords) in 80ms, said to be over 10 times faster than NOR Flash memory. In data segments of 5MBs, PRAM can erase and rewrite data approximately seven times faster than NOR Flash.

Samsung and Hynix have started to work on 30-nano STT-RAM. They hope to have chips out by the end of the year (probably samples only...). It appears that the Korean government is helping to fund the project.
Samsung and Hynix announced the JV in 2008, they hoped to get commercial chips by 2012. Hynix has licensed STT-RAM technology from Grandis in 2008.

Samsung and Hynix are to launch their STT-RAM JV in September (after having announced their intentions in January 2008).

The companies said they will engage in joint research and development (R&D) of spin-torque-transfer magnetic-random-access-memory (STT-MRAM) chips, and become the industry standard-setters for the next generation 450mm wafer fab market.

Samsung Electronics and Hynix Semiconductor, the world's two largest memory chip manufacturers, have agreed to join hands to develop the next generation of semiconductors so that South Korea can stay competitive with its foreign rivals.

Under the three-stage plan A total of about 50M$ will be spent to design and build futuristic chips such as the spin-torque-transfer magnetic-random-access-memory (STT-MRAM) and various non-volatile memory devices.

 For future technologies Samsung is also working on new technologies such as phase-change random access memory (RAM), magnetic RAM, ferroelectric-RAM.