Blog Posts - Opinions and observations from the Professor

DRAM product lifecycles are probably longer than you think!

By Lane Mason October 5, 2011

Anyone who designs in a memory product into their system has to be concerned about product lifecycles. For consumer products, this is rarely an issue…the system is replaced by a new and ‘better’ system in a few years, which can use a totally different memory.

DRAM Status Report 3Q11

By Lane Mason September 22, 2011

Below is a table showing the status of various DRAM makers’ technology and fab status about the end of the current month, and end of 3Q11.

New Memory Technology Market Share? Under 5% in five years is my guess.

By Lane Mason September 19, 2011

For the past many years, the industry has ‘seen the end coming for the traditional NVM scaling roadmap’, and has been hyping and exploring alternative technologies that will replace floating gate NAND, which are now estimated to ‘….surely face a hard stop in scaling at about 15nm.’

NAND Price Outlook for remainder of 2011, and into 2012

By Lane Mason September 13, 2011

Forecasting prices for memory chips is a thankless task. Unforeseen events take place, like the tsunami in Japan earlier in 2011, or the financial crisis in the Fall of 2008. Some of these events cause permanent upsets of the price trend line, and some are transient.

Taiwan’s Non-DRAM Memory Future:

By Lane Mason September 7, 2011

While the handwriting is pretty much on the wall for DRAM makers in Taiwan, pointing from bad times now to worse times ahead, the view from the vantage point of other (non-DRAM) memory products is not nearly so dire.

Taiwan’s DRAM Future

By Lane Mason September 1, 2011

Memory has often been the point of entry for new players in the chip business, and for those who wanted an instant access to high volume sales. It is a standardized, commodity part requiring little design-in effort and little after-sales customer support. It enjoys a wide base of users, and it has a rather predictable roadmap and predictable future demand trajectory. Memories were the inroad for Japan in the 1980s and Korea in the 1990s…and for Taiwan in the following decade.

Putting the Processor Inside the DRAM!

By Jim Handy June 22, 2011

What if a server with a very modest CPU could out-perform a server based on Intel's most advanced processor, at the same time cutting power consumption by more than half?

TI's New Ferroelectric Venture for Memory in MCUs

By Jim Handy June 17, 2011

Texas Instruments (TI) introduced a line of 16-bit MCUs that include ferroelectric memories on 5/3/11. This is a new twist both for TI and for FRAMs

CES Defines the Future of Mobility and Personal Computing

By Bob Merritt January 12, 2011

I had the opportunity to attend a few days of the Consumer Electronics Conference last week. My strongest impression was of the significance of mobility. Going back in time to the Comdex exhibits held in the same buildings by many of the same companies, at that time “mobile computing” offered a portable version of desktop PCs with a lower level of performance. These early mobile configurations of course have become the dominant configuration as they have gained in performance and infrastructure support.

Review of 2010 Predictions

By Bob Merritt January 11, 2011

Predicting advances in technologies is much easier than predicting the availability of supply and the growth in demand for new technologies, but how can we truly measure progress if we don’t set the milestones and expectations?

Featured Resources

- Events, papers, guides and more

PRODUCT GUIDE: Serial SRAM Memory Family

Microchip’s new serial SRAM family provides a way to easily and inexpensively add external RAM to almost any application. These serial devices use less power and fewer I/O connections than traditional parallel SRAM. And, they allow designers to use a smaller microcontroller rather than moving to a larger microcontroller just to get more on-board RAM.

PRODUCT GUIDE: SPI-Compatible Serial SRAM Devices

Microchip’s new serial SRAM family provides a way to easily and inexpensively add external RAM to almost any application. These serial devices use less power and fewer I/O connections than traditional parallel SRAM. Also, they allow designers to use a smaller microcontroller rather than moving to a larger microcontroller just to get more on-board RAM.

PRODUCT GUIDE: SST Serial and Parallel Flash Memory

Microchip's SST Serial and Parallel Flash Memory features products with high performance, superior reliability and low power consumption.

+ view all resources

Featured Video

Introduction to the UNIO EEPROM Family Part 1 of 2
When small size or I/O resources on the microcontroller are a concern and non-volatile memory is required, the UNI/O EEPROM Family is another option. This seminar begins with a brief overview of the serial buses used in today's mainstream EEPROMs, followed by a comparison of the new UNI/O Bus protocol. Since this new bus only uses a single I/O port for communication, it gives engineers another option for miniaturization and lower system costs. As the seminar progresses, the main features of this new memory are shown along with the advanced features never before seen in a single EEPROM device. Finally, there is a discussion on an easy way to evaluate UNI/O EEPROMs using existing customer hardware and Microchip's software drivers.

Featured Datasheets

PRODUCT GUIDE: UNI/O® Serial EEPROMs: Single I/O Bus Interface

The UNI/O® serial EEPROM is a SINGLE I/O EEPROM device that has been developed by Microchip Technology Inc. The EEPROM has been developed to work on the UNI/O® Bus, a propriety single I/O bus protocol, also developed by Microchip Technology Inc. The Bus combines the clock and data lines into a single bit stream using the Manchester Encoding technique. This single I/O EEPROM family has the advantage of using just ONE MCU I/O pin as opposed to at least 4 MCU I/O’s needed by the SPI, 4 I/O’s by the Microwire and at least 2 I/O’s by the I2C.