Saturday, May 9, 2009

How 3-D integration will challenge and reshape memory industry

LYON, FRANCE: The memory semiconductor industry is about to go through a period of major technological changes as new integration trends and disruptive packaging technologies pave the way to the future growth of this industry.
Memory Applications: Packaging & Integration Trends, a new 2009 Report from Yole Développement, presents the end applications driving the use of 3-D integrated memories and their key players. It also includes an overview of the memory packaging market, its forecasted evolutions with new applications and growth in Flash and DRAM market.

Historically, DRAM memory market has been mostly driven by computing applications, while NOR Flash has been mainly deployed into consumer and communication devices. More recently, NAND Flash memory has emerged as the most promising solid state storage solution for current consumer devices and is showing as the best candidate for hard disk drive replacement in the near future.

Integration is the next challenge
On the other hand, today wireless is growing and enabling new market segments everywhere, (smartphones, mobile pocket computing devices…). As a result, CONNECTIVIY and INTEGRATION are now new drivers to deal with.

Demand for data is increasing everywhere: Faster pipes, more pipes (WAN, LAN, PAN), HD multimedia! Current complexity and concurrency require more than ever higher data capacity, improved power consumption and is stressing existing well established architectures: new interconnects, integration schemes and packaging technologies are needed to support higher performance, breakthrough density and low power consumption devices. 3-D IC integration is showing as a major solution path to tackle these challenges and memories will be key components in achieving this successful integration.

3-D integration will open a new application space for memory market growth
Yole Developpement has followed the burgeoning 3-D Packaging industry since its early beginning. The global economic downturn is challenging the fast adoption of the “Through Silicon Vias” technology into high volume applications such as low cost memories. “However, we are seeing concrete signs that this market is definitely taking-off, with the first 3-D integrated DRAM memories being shipped this year: we estimate that about 20 000 wafers of DRAM memory will be shipped with 3D TSV by the end of 2009, with production moving forward to higher volumes in 2010” explained Jérôme Baron, Technology & Market Analyst at Yole Développement.

By 2013, Yole Développement expects that telecom and computing industries will drive more than 70% percent of the total volume for 3-D TSV stacked memories.

3-D integration with memories is a hot topic at the moment because of the challenging market conditions and of the important investment needed for building the required infrastructure. As a result, pre-competitive alliances and partnerships may be necessary to drive the risk down while accelerating product adoption. Memory manufacturers, CMOS foundries, OSAT packaging houses, Fab-less IC players and integrated device manufacturers are all concerned and actively preparing for this ultimate integration.

3D-TSV memory wafer shipmentsSource: Yole Développement

This new study aims at answering the following questions: What are the end applications driving the use of 3-D integrated memories in the Flash and DRAM market? Who are the key players doing it? How will it happen? When will the market ramp up? What is the impact of the current economic turmoil application per application? Finally, how big is this 3-D memory market going to be and at which conditions in terms of cost?

Memory applications key market metrics
To support its investigations in this complex and fast moving market, Yole Development is also distributing the “Memory LSI – 2008 Report” from Nikkei BP Consulting, a market research company based in Tokyo, Japan that has been focusing on the analysis of the key market metrics of the memory industry, based on strong interactions all the year with memory fabs worldwide. The two complementary reports are available separately or both in a bundle package.

Memory Applications: Packaging & Integration Trends Report
Catalogue price: Euros 3,690.00 (single user license). For special offers and the price in dollars, please contact David Jourdan (jourdan@yole.fr or +33 472 83 01 95)

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