3D Solid State Memory, Part One

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomcoughlin/2015/07/30/3d-solid-state-memory-part-one/

This is the first in a two-part article on three dimensional non-volatile solid-state memory/storage devices. The first part will talk about 3D NAND flash technology, but will also include some discussion of the recent Micron/Intel 3D XPoint non-volatile memory technology announcement.
3D NAND flash memory products were introduced by Samsung Semiconductor at the 2013 Flash Memory Summit (Tom Coughlin is the general chairman of the Flash Memory Summit) and began shipping in 2014. The basic idea of 3D NAND is to stack the flash storage cells vertically on the silicon substrate. The shipping Samsung products have 32 of these cells stacked in these holes to create a storage density much higher than with planar flash memory with the storage cells side by side on the chip.
As a consequence of the 3D structure, the lithographic features on the NAND chip can be larger, resulting in products with higher write endurance. This makes increasing the number of bits per cell easier and so Samsung V-NAND products are often three-level cells (TLC) rather than the two-level cells (MLC) that have been common in client and enterprise SSDs. More bits per cell and more cells per chip give a higher storage capacity with a reduction in the cost per bit.
Samsung is now shipping several client SSD products using its version of 3D NAND, called V-NAND with capacities up to 1 TB. Since the Samsung introduction all the major flash memory manufacturers have announced plans to bring 3D NAND flash to market by 2016. SanDisk and Toshiba announced their plans to move to 3D NAND by 2016, believing that they would be able to support the industry with their planar NAND before then. Micron and Intel recently announced their own 3D NAND products that could enable 3.5 TB M.2 SSDs as shown below.
This week Micron and Intel announced their 3D XPoint non-volatile memory technology and Intel said that they would be sampling 128 Gbit XPoint chips shortly.  The companies said that their XPoint technology combines the performance, density, power, non-volatility and cost advantages of all available memory technologies on the market today. The technology is up to 1,000 times faster and has up to 1,000 times greater endurance than NAND, and is 10 times denser than conventional memory.  They didn’t give many details on the technology behind XPoint except to say that it is a cross-point storage technology and doesn’t require CMOS transistors associated with the memory cells.  Instead the company appears to be using diode switches with the cells rather than transistors.  This helps with increasing memory density since diodes take less space on the chip than transistors.

There are several candidate technologies that Micron and Intel may be using. These include several types of resistive RAM (ReRAM), spin based MRAM (ST-MRAM) and Phase Change Memory (PRAM). Many of these technologies use a cross-bar architecture and in principal the cross-bar architecture can be scaled to the third dimension, allowing higher density storage per chip area. Intel has reportedly said that this technology doesn’t use ReRAM and that has led some to speculate that it may be a Phase Change memory (see Daily Tech article by Jason Mick,
Micron and Intel have worked on Phase Change memory for many years and hold or license several patents on this technology. Several years ago Micron began shipping some phase change memory for evaluation and at the 2014 flash memory summit HGST was showing HDDs that included some 3 year-old Micron phase change memory chips as a cache in the HDD. Micron and Intel have invested heavily in phase change memory in the past and own many patents on this technology. It is likely that the XPoint technology is a 3-D phase change technology using diodes and that Intel and Micron are planning to use this technology to support Intel’s up-coming generation of processors.
After Chinese Tsinghua Unigroup made a $23B bid for Micron, Micron and Intel have announced a new fast and cheap non-volatile memory technology that can be scaled to 3D architectures without transistors, that they indicate is ready to roll out. This will increase the perceived value of Micron but also could change the face of non-volatile memory applications in the next few years and further validate the role of 3D memory.

Chips left Samsung Electronics' Q2 earnings

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2015/07/133_183872.html

By Yoon Sung-won

Samsung Electronics' semiconductor business has recorded its largest operating profit in five years, leading the company's recovery from last year's slump.

The nation's leading electronics maker said in its regulatory filing that it posted 6.9 trillion won ($5.96 billion) in operating profit in the second quarter, up 15 percent from the previous quarter's 5.98 trillion won. Its sales stood at 48.54 trillion won, a 3 percent increase from 47.12 trillion won in the first quarter.

The company's semiconductor business was at the forefront of the better performance with 3.4 trillion won in operating profit and 11.29 trillion won in sales.

"Sales increases in high-capacity products and high value-added ones for mobile devices and servers have led the performance in the memory chip segment," Samsung Electronics Investor Relations Executive Director Lee Myung-jin said during a conference call Thursday.

"In the system large-scale integrated circuit (LSI) segment, sales increases in smartphone parts, such as 14-nano mobile application processors, and high value-added LSI products, such as high-resolution image sensors, and display drive integrated circuits for flexible panels have led the growth."

In the third quarter, the company said its DRAM and NAND Flash memory chip production will see more than 10 percent growth.

"In the DRAM segment, we will work to meet the expanding demand for DDR4 and LPDDR4 products for high-end smartphones and servers and speeding up the conversion to 20-nano process," said Baek Ji-ho, a senior executive of Samsung Electronics' mobile business division.

"As the demand of NAND Flash products for mobile storage and solid-state drives is expected to grow, we will increase the VNAND supply and improve cost competitiveness by converting to 10-nano process."

Baek also showed confidence in future competition in the VNAND sector.

"We will be able to roll out the third-generation VNAND products in October at the latest and we will not lag behind any other products in cost competitiveness," he said.

"It is possible to ramp up third-generation VNAND production earlier to meet demands from enterprises and data centers if needed."

Samsung Electronics' system LSI business division vice president, Hong Kyu-sik, said: "We expect the 14-nano foundry sales will increase in the latter half while the overall performance is also likely to increase on the back of expanding demand for high-resolution image sensors and the company's entrance to the Chinese mobile device market."

Mobile sector fails to rebound

The IT and Mobile Communication (IM) business division, which has been the major income generator for Samsung Electronics, could not break the stagnation despite the launch of the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge.

Despite the lower-than-expected popularity of the S6, that of the S6 Edge has far exceeded the company's expectations, creating a supply shortage.

The company's budget handset sales were also hit hard by aggressive marketing drives by Chinese brands, affecting the overall performance of the mobile segment.

"Our smartphone shipments have recorded minus growth due to the decreased sales of budget handsets," said Park Jin-young, Samsung Electronics' mobile business division executive. "The S6 Edge has showed higher-than-expected market demand, which led to a shortage in supply and an increase in marketing expenses."

The company said it will introduce an "elastic" price policy for the S6 and S6 Edge while rolling out new large-screen premium handsets and budget models to boost market competitiveness.

The company said it will sell the curved display panels, which have been used for Galaxy Note 4 and Galaxy S6 Edge, to other smartphone manufacturers.

In the consumer electronics segment, Samsung Electronics said it will continue to focus on super ultra-high-definition (SUHD) televisions and it plans to expand the application of the latest display technologies to cheaper models.

The company said it invested 13.2 trillion won establishing facilities in the first half, up 30 percent from last year, to secure future growth engines.

It also said its board of directors had decided to provide a 1,000 won mid-term dividend per share, which is double the amount of last year.

Samsung Electronics closed at 1,215,000 won on the Seoul bourse, down 3.8 percent from a day ago on concerns of delayed recovery.

Electronics Recycler Looks for Treasure in Trashed Gadgets

http://www.wsj.com/articles/electronics-recycler-looks-for-treasure-in-trashed-gadgets-1438100925?mod=WSJ_TechWSJD_moreTopStories

By

Loretta Chao

Updated July 28, 2015 12:31 p.m. ET

0 COMMENTS

Plunging metals prices are putting “e-waste” recyclers in a bind.
These companies, which collect outdated and broken electronic devices and shred them to extract the metals inside, have seen incomes plummet along with the value of copper, iron ore and other raw materials.
One of the largest e-waste recyclers, Electronic Recyclers International Inc., is partnering with iFixit, a company best known for exposing the innards of new iPhones to Apple Inc. fans, to tap a more lucrative market: repair shops and gearheads who will pay top dollar for spare parts.
IFixit already sells salvaged electronic components on its website. The company aims to turn a niche market into big business by partnering with ERI, which each month converts some 25 million pounds of electronics into scrap. Earlier this year, engineers from iFixit began assisting ERI with stripping devices of valuable parts at a facility in Fresno, Calif. The companies expanded the number of devices they strip down in June, and plan to operate in all of ERI’s facilities next year.

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ERI and iFixit are tapping into growing demand for electronic repair services, as expensive, fragile devices become more common. Cell phone repairs generated $1.4 billion in revenue last year, a figure that should rise along with electronics sales, according to IBISWorld, a research firm. For ERI, components sales are a way to boost profits as margins on its core scrap business are squeezed.
“When commodity prices are strong, it can make more sense to break a devices down into its raw components and recycle it,” said Brendan Egan, head of online marketing for ERI. When they’re weak, “it can make more sense to … give those parts a second life.”
An iPhone 5s contains copper worth about 15 cents, down from roughly 21 cents when the smartphone was released in 2013. Prices for iron ore, another common metal found in smartphones, are down over 60% in the last two years, while the trace amounts of gold found in phones have declined in value by around 20%. By contrast, a smartphone motherboard and display could be sold for $50 each, said iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens.
To be sure, the appetite for repairing old devices may be limited. About 1.5 billion smartphones are expected to be sold this year, according to research firm IDC. But customers routinely replace their phones rather than repair them, and vendors are constantly releasing new models and cutting prices for entry level devices. A Gartner Inc. survey of smartphone users worldwide found that only 19% of devices wind up with recyclers like ERI.
Even so, parts are often in short supply because manufacturers of mobile devices aren’t inclined to encourage repairs, which would potentially hurt sales of new devices, said Rob Schafer, an analyst at Gartner.
“It doesn’t surprise me that [recyclers like ERI] want to climb up that food chain to get to the components side,” Mr. Schafer said.
In early tests, customers snapped up stands for the Microsoft Surface tablet, which can be difficult to find from third party sellers, Mr. Wiens said. He added that motherboards for Samsung smartphones were also popular.
The deal with ERI is “kind of like AutoZone and the junk yard teaming up,” he said.

Toshiba develops 2 new process technologies for MCUs, wireless ICs

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20150727PD212.html

Toshiba has announced the development of a flash memory embedded process based on 65nm logic process and a single-poly non-volatile memory (NVM) process based on 130nm logic and analog power process. The new process technologies were developed for low-cost applications such as microcontrollers (MCU), wireless communication ICs, motor controller drivers and power supply ICs.

The IoT market is seeing strong demand for low power consumption in areas including wearable and healthcare-related equipment. In response, Toshiba has adopted SST's third-generation SuperFlash cell technology, in combination with its own 65nm logic process technology. Toshiba has also fine-tuned circuits and manufacturing processes in developing its ultra-low power consumption flash embedded logic process. Microcontrollers for consumer and industrial applications that apply the process can lower power consumption to approximately 60% that of current mainstream technology, according to the company.

Following the first series of MCUs, Toshiba plans to release sample BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) products, the short-range wireless technology, in fiscal year 2016. The company also plans to apply the 65nm process to its wireless communication IC product family that can optimize use of low power consumption characteristics, including NFC controllers and contactless cards.

In applications where significant cost reductions are a concern, Toshiba has developed an NVM embedded process that adopts Taiwan-based Yield Microelectronics' (YMC) single-poly MTP (Multi-time programmable) cells on Toshiba's 130nm logic process technology. Applying MTP specifications for write times improves the process' performance while limiting increased steps in mask pattern lithography to three or fewer, and even none.

In addition, by using MTP to adjust output accuracy, Toshiba will expand its product line-up in fields where higher accuracy is essential, such as power management ICs, the company said.

Sample shipments of the 130nm-NVM and 65nm-flash are scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2015 and the second quarter of 2016, respectively.

Spreadtrum chipset adopted for Samsung Galaxy Tab E tablets

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20150727PR202.html

Spreadtrum Communications has announced that its quad-core mobile chipset, the SC7730SE, has been adopted by Samsung Electronics in a tablet series designed for launch in India and European markets.

The SC7730SE is now shipping in the Samsung Galaxy Tab E tablets which will be available with WCDMA (SM-T561 series) and Wi-Fi (SM-T560 series) features. The Samsung Galaxy Tab E series is powered by Spreadtrum's 1.3GHz quad-core processor and features a 9.6-inch TFT LCD display, Android 4.4 Kitkat OS, a 5MP rear camera and 2MP front-facing camera, 8GB internal memory and 1.5GB RAM, a Micro SD slot and a built-in battery of 5000mA.

"We are very proud to partner with Samsung with the launch of their new products based on our quad-core chipsets again. The designs of the GALAXY Tab E tablets meet the needs of consumers of the Indian and European markets, who are looking forward to multiple entertainment features and affordability with Samsung quality and design," said Spreadtrum chairman and CEO Leo Li.

This Wi-Fi Reflector Chip Speeds Up Wearables And Improves Battery Life

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/71438/20150723/wi-fi-reflector-chip-speeds-up-wearables-improves-battery-life.htm

Wearable devices are rising as the next big thing in tech, but there's one issue that is plaguing the wearable industry—battery life. Researchers at NASA, however, have figured out a way to transmit data between wearable devices and other devices that takes up much less power.
The microchips basically reflect wireless signals rather than using regular transmitters, and the result is data transmission that's up to three times faster than using regular Wi-Fi.
"The idea is if the wearable device only needs to reflect the Wi-Fi signal from a router or cell tower, instead of generate it, the power consumption can go way down (and the battery life can go way up)," said Adrian Tang, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement.
As with any data, information sent to a wearable is represented as a 1 and 0, and in the system that a wearable device uses to communicate, this has to be made clear. In this new system, information that is absorbed within the circuit is represented as a "0" and information that's reflected that is represented as a "1." This switch mechanism is very simple and uses minimal power.
The real challenge is the fact that a wearable device isn't the only thing that reflects a signal. Things like doors, walls, furniture and almost anything else that happens to be around also reflect a signal. What this means is that the chip needs to be able to differentiate between the real signal and the signal being reflected by objects in the background. To overcome this, the team was able to develop a chip that constantly senses a background signal and suppresses it, enabling actual Wi-Fi signals to be transmitted without any interference.

(Photo : NASA)

The results are certainly impressive. At around 8 feet away from the wireless router, the team garnered a data transfer at around 330 megabits per second, which is approximately three times the rate of a typical Wi-Fi signal, all while using around 1,000 times less power.
While this sounds great, there are still a few challenges involved with the new tech. While the wearable device will experience a low power drain, the device that it is communicating with must have good battery life or be plugged in. Not only that, but the wireless router will also experience more power use, which could mean a rise in a user's power bill. Researchers are still figuring out how to avoid this issue.

STMicro Sees Rising Revenue on Chips for Cars, Wearables

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-23/stmicro-sales-forecast-trails-estimates-on-weak-computer-demand

STMicroelectronics NV forecast rising revenue for the third quarter as demand for chips used in cars and industrial machines is offsetting slowing personal-computer sales. The stock rose the most in almost two years.
Sales will climb as much as 6 percent from the previous three-month period, Europe’s largest chipmaker said Thursday. That’s equivalent to as much as $1.87 billion. Analysts on average predicted $1.85 billion. The gross margin will be about 35 percent of revenue, the Geneva-based company said. Analysts had estimated 35.3 percent.
STMicro is benefiting from rising orders for more lucrative chips sold to makers of vehicles, wearable electronics and industrial machinery. Still, PC sales are declining as more consumers rely on tablets and smartphones to get online. That, along with weaker demand in markets including China, is holding back STMicro’s ability to consistently generate profits.
“Everything was in line in a tough market,” said Janardan Menon, a London-based analyst at Liberum Capital Ltd. “Given the circumstances, the results and guidance are pretty good.”
Shares of STMicro rose as much as 7.2 percent in Paris trading, the steepest intraday advance since Sept. 12, 2013, and were up 6.9 percent to 7.28 euros at 12:15 p.m., giving the chipmaker a market value of 6.6 billion euros ($7.2 billion). They had gained about 10 percent this year through Wednesday. The French and Italian governments are among STMicro’s biggest shareholders.
Second-quarter net income fell to $35 million from $38 million a year earlier, STMicro said. A first-quarter net loss of $22 million ended a positive streak earlier this year, after extensive restructuring had helped the company return to profit in 2014. It warned then of slowing demand from PC and Chinese customers.

STMicro forecast third-quarter sales will increase 2.5 percent from the previous three months, plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. The gross margin will be 33 percent to 37 percent, or about 35 percent on average, it said.
“We see solid growth in micro-controllers and automotive,” Finance Chief Carlo Ferro said during a conference call. For the rest, “we see lower-than-average evolution or eventually not growth.”
STMicro’s attempts to consistently generate profits have been challenged by mixed customer trends. While efforts to tailor to makers of cars, wearable electronics and a variety of automated machinery have paid off, products such as PCs, smartphones and tablets also matter in determining how fast the company can reach its long-term financial targets. Lower-than-expected iPhone shipments by Apple Inc. this week sent the shares of European suppliers including STMicro lower.
STMicro is joining rivals such as Texas Instruments Inc. in getting affected by weaker orders from PC-equipment makers. Global PC shipments are set to fall 6.2 percent in 2015, the fourth consecutive year of declines amid competition from tablets and smartphones, researcher IDC said in May. Meanwhile economic growth in China is projected to slow to 7 percent this year, the least since 1990.

North American semiconductor equipment industry posts June book-to-bill ratio of 0.98, says SEMI

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20150722PR203.html

North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted US$1.51 billion in orders worldwide in June 2015 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 0.98, according to SEMI. A book-to-bill of 0.98 means that US$98 worth of orders were received for every US$100 of product billed for the month.

SEMI reports that the three-month average of worldwide bookings in June 2015 was US$1.51 billion. The bookings figure is 2.6% lower than the final May 2015 level of US$1.55 billion, and is 3.5% higher than the June 2014 order level of US$1.46 billion.

The three-month average of worldwide billings in June 2015 was US$1.54 billion. The billings figure is 1.0% lower than the final May 2015 level of US$1.56 billion, and is 16.2% higher than the June 2014 billings level of US$1.33 billion.

"The June book-to-bill saw slight declines in the three-month averages for both booking and billings compared to May," said Denny McGuirk, president and CEO of SEMI. "Both figures, however, are above the trends reported one year ago and the first half of the year has been one of positive growth."

The SEMI book-to-bill is a ratio of three-month moving averages of worldwide bookings and billings for North American-based semiconductor equipment manufacturers.

New Chips Provide a Spark for Wireless Charging

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/539346/new-chips-provide-a-spark-for-wireless-charging/

Aiming to jump-start the stalled market for wireless power systems, chip maker Efficient Power Conversion this week announced the launch of a new line of semiconductors made from gallium nitride, a material that’s 10 times faster than silicon and that many believe represents the future of the semiconductor industry. The new chips are designed specifically to support wireless power systems such as those produced by WiTricity. EPC is headed by chip industry veteran Alex Lidow, who coinvented a type of transistor used for power conversion systems in a range of products including home appliances, air conditioners, and energy-efficient lighting. For many years the CEO of International Rectifier, still the largest producer of such transistors, Lidow has in recent years become one of the leading apostles of using gallium nitride, rather than silicon, to make transistors. EPC’s products are already in use in telecom equipment, satellites, laptop chargers, and virtual-reality devices. Now, says Lidow, his company’s technology is set to overhaul wireless power transfer.

“The adoption of wireless power transfer is critically dependent upon the convenience, cost, and efficiency of the system,” Lidow says. “All three of these factors have delayed broad adoption of any standard.”
The subject of considerable hype a few years ago, wireless power systems have failed to take off as anticipated—partly, as Lidow points out, for lack of a universally accepted technology standard. At this point there are at least two competing standards: Qi, which is backed by the Wireless Power Consortium, and Rezence, which is supported by the Alliance for Wireless Power. Rezence is based on the principle of magnetic resonance, a form of inductive coupling that uses a magnetic field to transfer power between devices. Magnetic resonance enables multiple devices to be charged simultaneously without being precisely aligned with the energy source. Although many analysts consider magnetic resonance to be the future of wireless power, Qi got an earlier start in the market and is backed by some industry giants, including Qualcomm, Microsoft, Sony, and LG. (Many companies are members of both the Wireless Power Consortium and the Association for Wireless Power.) EPC’s chips are designed to support magnetic resonance systems covered by the Rezence standard.
Research firm IHS forecasts that the market for wireless charging will reach $8.5 billion in annual revenue by 2018.
“The remaining battles for this mass market are best efficiency at the lowest cost,” says Lidow. The use of gallium nitride, he adds, enables EPC to reduce the number of components on the wireless transmitter as well as the overall system size, and to lower the cost of the integrated circuits.
Ultimately, Lidow’s goals are much larger: he believes that gallium nitride will replace silicon transistors across a broad range of technologies, not just wireless power—including the power conversion systems that he helped develop in the 1970s. “This is the beginning of the real conversion from silicon,” he says. “My goal is to obsolete that which I helped create.”

RAM price sinks 30%

http://news.mk.co.kr/english/newsRead.php?sc=30800006&cm=English%20News_&year=2015&no=672723&selFlag=sc&relatedcode=&wonNo=&sID=308

The prices of the flagship memory chip, DRAM (dynamic random-access memory) used in personal computers, have been on the decline from early this year.


This seems to come in line with waning demand for PCs, putting South Korea’s chipmakers such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix on edge for possible further price falls.

According to sources from DRAMeXchange, a market research firm, DDR3 4Gb spot price, the benchmark DRAM price, tallied an average of $2.55, down 30.7 percent compared to $3.68 early this year.

The continued fall in the DRAM price is attributable primarily to shrinking demand caused by sluggish sales of PCs. The Internet Data Center (IDC), a US market research firm, said PC shipments slipped 6.7 percent year-on-year (yoy) to 68,585,000 units in the first quarter (Q1).

Another research firm Gartner announced that PC shipments lost 5.2 percent over the corresponding period. Intel disclosed during the first quarter earnings release that lackluster sales of PCs drove down sales of its semiconductor division by 8.3 percent. In these circumstances, industry observers suggest that any further DRAM price drops would lead to production adjustment in the industry.

China's Tsinghua Unigroup Plans $23 Billion Offer for Micron

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-14/tsinghua-unigroup-said-to-plan-23-billion-offer-for-micron

The investment arm of one of China’s top universities is planning to offer $23 billion for chipmaker Micron Technology Inc., a person familiar with the matter said, in a deal that would be the largest takeover of a foreign firm by a Chinese company. Micron surged in Frankfurt trading.
Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd. will bid $21 a share, or about 19 percent more than Monday’s closing price in New York, and present the offer as soon as Tuesday, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. Micron spokesman Dan Francisco said the company hasn’t received a proposal.
A purchase would give China, which accounts for more than half of the world’s demand for semiconductors, the technology to build memory chips that go into computers and smartphones. The Chinese government has budgeted to spend as much as 1 trillion yuan ($161 billion) on the chip industry over the next five to 10 years, consulting firm McKinsey & Co. estimates.
“This is the right move for Tsinghua because Micron has memory chip technology, which is very hard to develop,” said Gu Wenjun, chief analyst at iCwise, a Shanghai-based consulting company. “But there is only a small possibility U.S. regulators will approve this deal because it has a very strict review over offers from foreign capital, especially China.”
Approval from Chinese authorities for the deal has been completed with any takeover still subject to clearance from U.S. regulators, the person familiar said.
The Wall Street Journal first reported on the offer for Micron, which rose as much as 21 percent in German trading.

Regulatory Approval

State-controlled Tsinghua Unigroup is the investment arm of Tsinghua University, which counts the country’s President Xi Jinping and former President Hu Jintao among its alumni.
A deal would be the largest outbound acquisition for a China-based company, surpassing Cnooc Ltd.’s $17.4 billion bid for Nexen Energy ULC in 2012, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It would also give China the world’s fifth largest chipmaker by revenue, one able to compete with the likes of Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. with manufacturing capabilities in the U.S., Japan and Singapore.
As semiconductor makers consolidate in the face of rising costs and shrinking customer pools, the proposed Micron acquisition would extend the record year the industry’s having for deals, including Avago Technologies Ltd.’s agreement in May to pay about $37 billion for Broadcom Corp.
Micron on June 26 reported its first revenue decline in more than two years on weakening demand for its dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, chips used in PCs. The company is expanding its offerings to include memory for smartphones and servers and another type of chips used as storage in mobile devices and computers.
Micron shares fell 18 percent on the day after it reported the revenue decline, the sharpest single-day drop since December 2008. The stock is down 50 percent this year and Micron has a market value of $19 billion as of Monday.

Competition over 10 nano system semiconductor getting fiercer

http://news.mk.co.kr/english/newsRead.php?sc=30800006&cm=English%20News_&year=2015&no=666592&selFlag=sc&relatedcode=&wonNo=&sID=308

Samsung Electronics, a South Korean electronics company, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) have started compete to produce 10 nano chips, the next-generation system semiconductor, in full swing. TSMC is a leading semiconductor company in Taiwan.


The Korean electronics giant gained the upper hand in memory semiconductor such as Dram and Nand Flash but the company is a last mover in the non memory-based system semiconductor sector. TSMC had dominated the field but Samsung overtook TSMC for the first time in January as it started producing 14 nano products. After that, TSMC has made utmost efforts to produce 10 nano products by investing $one billion, aiming to regain its reputation.

As TSMC has aggressively moved to develop 10 nano technology, Samsung Electronics also has made head against it. Kim Gi-nam, president of the semiconductor sector, got a head start by releasing 10 nano technology earlier than its rival at the global solid state circuit seminar held in San Francisco, US, in the spring

Mr Kim said in a keynote address, “with the expansion of various information technology including Internet of Things (IoT), the data-based era is expected to begin in the near future,” adding, “we would make efforts to innovate technology for the improvement of semiconductor chips and low power solution security.”

The major reason of the uncompromising competition over 10 nano products between Samsung and TSMC is that the products are highly likely to be installed in the next-generation mobile devices of Apple

SK hynix launches in-house UFS 2.0

By Kim Yoo-chul

SK hynix has developed a universal flash storage (UFS) 2.0 64-gigabytes (GB) solution, based on its own 16-nanometer NAND flash fabrication technology and in-house firmware, as well as a controller.

UFS provides faster internal storage technology and the demand for UFS-embedded solutions remains solid amid growing appetites by consumers for expanded data storage in smartphones and other computing devices.

The SK Group's semiconductor affiliate said the solution represents a groundbreaking leap in performance by enabling "high-speed gear 3" interface with dual data lanes.

UFS 2.0 is the next generation of embedded flash memory to eMMC for mobile IT gadgets which drives a remarkable boost in reading/writing speed at low power and supports high density.

광고

In a statement, the world's second-largest memory chipmaker said its UFS 2.0 operates at 780 megabytes per second (MB/s) and 160MB/s of sequential read/write speed and runs random read/write speed at 32,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS) and 17,000 IOPS.

"As a result, it works three times faster in read speed than eMMC 5.1," said company spokesman Son Hee-young.

Additionally, the UFS 2.0 utilizes "command queue" technology used in solid-state drive (SSD) solutions to handle read and write commands simultaneously to achieve data operation efficiency by preventing buffering load in multi-tasking and ordering priorities of data works.

"To maximize prioritized command processing feature of UFS standard, the device employs ‘multi-thread' read processing internally to ensure that high priority command is serviced first irrespective of other outstanding tasks, delivering fast response to time-critical host requests for the best user experience," said the statement.

In consequence, it realizes even better performance in speed and power consumption over eMMC.

The company said the main goal is to see that smartphones begin to make use of the new UFS technology and relegate eMMC to standard-affair, budget and mid-range products.

"SK hynix is pleased to expect the mobile devices such as smartphones to enhance their performances with the advanced UFS 2.0," Choi Young-joon, head of its NAND solution development division, was quoted as saying in the statement.

UFS is forecast for installation in high end smartphones from this year and adoption in mid-low end products gradually.

According to IHS, a market research firm, the share of UFS in mobile embedded memory will take 4 percent in this year and grow up to 23 percent in 2017 and 49 percent in 2019.

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2015/07/133_182506.html

Europol supports international investigation on counterfeit electronics

https://www.europol.europa.eu/content/europol-supports-international-investigation-counterfeit-electronics

Four individuals arrested last week were arraigned on 1 July in Newark, New Jersey, based on charges for allegedly smuggling counterfeit Sony Camcorders, Apple iPhones, iPads and iPods, from China for sale in the United States.
The individuals, Italian, Venezuelan and Chinese nationals aged between 30 and 52 years, are charged in an eight-count indictment with importing and trafficking fake iPhones, iPads and iPods bearing counterfeit Apple trademarks and fake Camcorders bearing counterfeit Sony trademarks, as well as smuggling, structuring and international money laundering.
Europol supported the case, which was investigated by the : U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Newark, New Jersey and the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office White Collar Crimes Squad, with significant assistance from Italian law enforcement authorities.
According to the allegations in the indictment, from July 2009 through February 2014, the defendants conspired to smuggle into the U.S. from China over 40,000 electronic devices and accessories, including fake iPads, iPhones and iPods, along with labels and packaging, most bearing counterfeit Apple trademarks. The indictment alleges that the estimated manufacturers' suggested retail prices for an equivalent number of genuine items would have exceeded $15,000,000.
The indictment alleges that, to avoid detection by U.S. Customs officials, the devices often were shipped separately from the labels bearing counterfeit trademarks, and then were labelled and packaged after they passed through Customs. According to the indictment, the individuals then re-shipped the devices throughout the U.S. to co-conspirators.
According to the indictment, proceeds from the sales of the devices were funnelled back to the defendants' accounts in Florida and New Jersey via structured cash deposits – broken into multiple deposits of less than $10,000 each to avoid bank reporting requirements. The indictment further alleges that a portion of the proceeds was then transferred to co-conspirators in Italy, further disguising the source of the funds.
According to the indictment, the individuals made more than 100 illegal wire transfers totalling over $1,100,000 to Chinese accounts to facilitate their criminal activity.
The charges and allegations contained in the indictment are merely accusations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. 

Nvidia attempts to ease the path to deep learning

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2944932/nvidia-attempts-to-ease-the-path-to-deep-learning.html

Nvidia hopes to bring artificial intelligence to a wider range of applications with an update to its Digits software for designing neural networks.
Digits version 2, released Tuesday, comes with a graphical user interface, potentially making it accessible to programmers beyond the typical user-base of academics and developers who specialize in AI, said Ian Buck, Nvidia vice president of accelerated computing.
The previous version could be controlled only through the command line, which required knowledge of specific text commands and forced the user to jump to another window to view the results.

Nvidia's Digits software provides an easy way to train deep learning artificial intelligence models to do tasks such as recognize images of numbers.

Digits has also been enhanced to enable designs that run on more than one processor, enabling up to four processors to work together simultaneously to build a learning model. Because the models can run on multiple processors, Digits can build models up to four times as quickly compared to the first version.
Nvidia has a vested interest in expanding the use of artificial intelligence, which typically requires heavy computational power. Over the past decade the company has been marketing GPUs, originally designed for powering computer displays, to work as hardware accelerators that boost computing power for large systems.
Deep neural networks, also called deep learning networks, are software models that help computers recognize objects or other phenomena of interest, and are built through a trial and error process of learning what to look for. In recent years, they have been the basis for a new wave of AI capabilities that have accelerated and refined tasks such as object classification, speech recognition, and detection of cancerous cells. Nvidia first released Digits as a way to cut out a lot of the menial work it takes to set up a deep learning system.
One early user of Digits’ multi-processor capabilities has been Yahoo, which found this new approach cut the time required to build a neural network for automatically tagging photos on its Flickr service from 16 days to 5 days.
In addition to refreshing Digits, Nvidia also updated some of its other software to make it more friendly to AI development.
The company updated its CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) parallel programming platform and application programming interface, which also now supports 16-bit floating point arithmetic. Formerly, it supported only 32-bit floating point operations. Support for the smaller floating point size helps developers cram more data into the system for modeling. The company updated its CUDA Deep Neural Network library of common routines to support 16 bit floating point operations as well.

Samsung expects seventh straight profit decline in second quarter

Samsung had pinned much of its mobile turnaround hopes on its Galaxy S6 line. Juan Garzón/CNET

Samsung Electronics said Monday that it expects its operating profit for the second quarter will miss analysts' expectations as it continues to battle tough competition in the smartphone market.
Operating profit for the three-month period ending June 30 will be 6.9 trillion won ($6.1 billion), a decline of 4.2 percent from the year-ago period, the South Korean electronics giant estimated in a regulatory filing. Samsung's profit estimate fell short of the average analyst estimate of 7.2 trillion won compiled by Bloomberg.
Revenue for the quarter likely will come in at 48 trillion, compared with analysts' average estimates of 53 trillion won. The guidance, released today ahead of full earnings later this month, did not provide specific divisional results.
The results would represent the seventh straight decline year over year in quarterly profit for Samsung, which had previously posted five consecutive quarters of record profits but which over the past couple years has been struggling as consumers opt for devices from its rivals, such as Apple. Formerly accounting for two-thirds of Samsung's operating profit, smartphone shipments have been providing a smaller part of company's profit in recent quarters, squeezed in emerging markets by low-cost handset vendors such as Xiaomi and Huawei.
The company saw a decline in both smartphone sales and market share during the first quarter of 2015, research firm Gartner reported in May. The Korean electronics giant sold 81.1 million smartphones in the quarter, 4.4 million less than the same period a year ago. The company's market share stood at 24.2 percent, down from 30.4 percent in the first quarter of 2014.
The guidance comes on the heels of a disappointing first quarter, which saw the company's operating profit decline 30 percent and sales fall 12 percent. Samsung had pinned its hopes for a turnaround in the coming quarters on sales of the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, the new flagship handsets released to critical acclaim in April.

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The two devices feature metal casings instead of Samsung's normal plastic, and the Edge also includes a screen that curves around the sides of the device. Samsung opted to use its own processors in the devices instead of purchasing chips from suppliers, which also should benefit its financial results in coming months.
Despite Samsung mobile chief JK Shin's prediction that the flagship S6 line will set a Samsung record for unit shipments, the Galaxy S6 Edge is expected to be in short supply for the year due both to its expected popularity and to the difficulties in crafting its screen.

 http://www.cnet.com/news/samsung-expects-seventh-straight-quarterly-profit-decline/