Next iPhone Be Fabricated at TSMC

The article below discuss Apple fabricating 30% of A9 at TSCM fab. A9 is the microprocessor running the next iPhone.








More about Apple fabrication at Samsung and TSCM from October 2012 Apple Cutting Out Samsung Chips

Ron
Insightful, timely, and accurate semiconductor consulting.

Semiconductor information and news at - http://www.maltiel-consulting.com/

Apple makes 'last-minute decision' to use TSMC for 30% of 'A9' chip orders for next iPhone

By Neil Hughes
Wednesday, April 15, 2015, 06:21 pm PT (09:21 pm ET)

Facing poor yield rates from chipmaker GlobalFoundries, Apple has apparently made an eleventh-hour call as it solidifies its supply chain for the next-generation iPhone, opting to award nearly a third of "A9" chip orders to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

Well-connected analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities issued a note to investors on Wednesday, a copy of which was obtained by AppleInsider, revealing that Apple has apparently made what he called a "last-minute decision to recruit TSMC." Apple is said to have called an audible after partner GlobalFoundries continued to experience poor yield rates on production of the next-generation CPU.

Specifically, GlobalFoundries' "A9" chip yield rate is said to currently be at about 30 percent yield rate, which is well below what Kuo said is a mass-production "basic requirement" of 50 percent.
Apple is said to have turned to TSMC after partner GlobalFoundries showed exceptionally poor "A9" chip yield rates of around 30%.
"Recruiting TSMC reduces supply uncertainties for Apple," the analyst said.

Another factor in the decision, according to Kuo, are concerns from Apple that Samsung's chipmaking business may not be able to supply enough of its 14-nanometer design. That's because initial sales of the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge have apparently been greater than expected, and may pull 14-nanometer orders away from Apple.

Finally, Kuo also indicated that TSMC's competing 16-nanometer FinFET Turbo design has exceeded Apple's expectations in both yield rate and performance.

Another industry analyst said much the same in a report last month. Citing a recent trip to Asia, Timothy Arcuri from Cowen and Company said strong yields and attractive pricing led him to believe that TSMC had secured a large portion of Apple's A9 order. 

Apple's 2015 iPhone update is widely expected to sport a next-generation processor based on a smaller and more efficient design. Multiple reports have indicated that Samsung will build the majority of "A9" processors for Apple's next-generation iPhone. 

Samsung had a stranglehold on Apple's mobile processor business, building all units for the iPhone until last year. That's when TSMC began contributing chips for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, using a 20-nanometer process for the A8 processor that powers Apple's flagship handsets.

14nm FinFETs Technolgy

In the upcoming IEDM Intel will talk more about their 3D transistors using FinFET for the 14nm generation (see below). 

"Intel will reveal its processing secrets including its doping technique to prevent current leakage under the fins and to maintain very low doped fins, resulting in mitigation of variation, its use of two levels of air-gap-insulated interconnects at 80-and-160nm minimum pitches, yielding a 17% reduction in capacitance delays; eight layers of 52nm pitch interconnects embedded in low-k dielectrics"

Also IBM will discuss at IEDM adding SOI to FinFETs, which reduce their capacitance. SOI has been used by IBM for other processes, however it complicate designing circuits on the chips.

See more about FinFETs from May 2011 at - Tutorial: Intel 22nm 3D Tri-Gate FinFETs Transistors  

Ron
Insightful, timely, and accurate semiconductor consulting.
Semiconductor information and news at - http://www.maltiel-consultin

Intel, IBM Dueling 14nm FinFETS

IEDM reveals diametrically opposed approaches

R. Colin Johnson

10/21/2014 06:26 PM EDT 

PORTLAND, OR — Every digital semiconductor manufacturer and foundry in the world is trying to build 3D FinFETS that rival Intel, which is so far leading the pack by several years. Hot on Intel's heels is IBM, which just signed a deal to turn its fabs over to GlobalFoundries (which has already licensed Samsung's FinFET process that, according to Rick Doherty, research director of The Envisioneering Group, told EE Times stems from early IBM/GlobalFoundaries discussions). TSMC, AMD, Freescale, and others claim to be hot on Intel's and IBM's trail, but have yet to prove it.
With that background, the "dueling technologies" session over FinFET designs being held at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM, December 15 until December 17, 2014, in San Francisco) looks to be a knock-down, drag-out fight.
"The IEEE's use of the phrase 'dueling technologies' is right!" Doherty told us. "Engineers at IEDM will pass muster on the amazing advances of IBM and Intel first with applause, and later, with purchase orders."

The size of transistor gates and "fins," especially to interconnection, were reduced by more than a third from the previous generation of technology.
(Image: Intel)

Envisioneering believes the IBM FinFET details to be revealed at IEDM lean towards bolstering the Samsung/GlobalFoundaries FinFET technologies already being integrated into Global’s 14 nanometer processes.
"The combinations of dense memory, scalable power budgets and SoCs up to 600 square millimeters strongly point to these IEDM features being available on IBM silicon from Global," Doherty told us. "And possibly available to broader Global customers. What is not yet known is whether these technologies will be build upon the Samsung suite, or might become an alternative FinFET offering from Global."

Built on a fully depleted SOI technology base, IBM's 3D, FinFET architecture retains the advantages of SOI over bulk-based planar technologies, which IBM claims is a simpler manufacturing process, with isolation by structure, not doping, low-voltage operation, and lower power.
(Image: IBM)

Either way, Doherty told us that the winners here are customers of both Global and Intel.
"At the IEDM, system and silicon architects will start determining the best applications and markets for each. Intel has given a clear commitment to its novel FinFET designs," Doherty told us. "Global’s choice of two FinFET techniques will likely attract SoC, mobile and high performance users looking for custom solutions."
The biggest difference between IBM's and Intel's approach is that Intel -- as usual -- has taken the traditional bulk silicon approach to developing its FinFET design resulting in a a two- to four-year lead on its competitors in perfecting its approach. Intel has been manufacturing FinFETS in volume since 2011 starting with its 22nm Ivy Bridge and later Haswell micro-architecture processors. More recently it announced successfully transferring of the technology to its 14nm Broadwell micro-architecture which it is the centerpiece for its latest Core M processor family.
IBM, on the other hand, has take a more experimental approach using more expensive silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates that it claims simplify the manufacturing process, allow lower-voltage operation, which means lower-power chips in the long run.
FinFETS were designed to mitigate the leakage effect of short-gate transistors, and have proven to work with or without SOI. By wrapping the gate around the "fin" channel it is possible to fully or nearly-fully deplete the channel when its off leaving very little leakage current to overheat chips.
According to IEDM, Intel will reveal its processing secrets including its doping technique to prevent current leakage under the fins and to maintain very low doped fins, resulting in mitigation of variation, its use of two levels of air-gap-insulated interconnects at 80-and-160nm minimum pitches, yielding a 17% reduction in capacitance delays; eight layers of 52nm pitch interconnects embedded in low-k dielectrics; an embedded 140Mb SRAM memory with a tiny cell size of 0.0588 square micrometers. The fully saturated drive currents are significantly higher than for Intel's 22nm first-generation FinFETs (improvements of 15% for NMOS and 41% and PMOS transistors. Intel will also discuss how it achieved such high-aspect ratio rectangular fins only 8nm wide and 42nm high, according to IEDM. All Intel transistors are operating at a supply voltage of only 0.7 volts.
IBM counter argument
IBM will describe its SOI approach to building 14nm FinFETs, emphasizing that its insulated substrates are worth the extra money the wafers cost because of the processing steps they reduce to isolated devices from one another. Its latest 14nm FinFETs are 35% faster than its planar 22nm transistors and use an operating voltage of 0.8 volts.
IBM will also claim the world's smallest and densest DRAM cells ever demonstrated, taking up just 0.0174 square micrometers. IBM will also describe its unique dual-workfunction process, for both low power and high speed, by virtue of optimizing the threshold voltages of both NMOS and PMOS transistors without mobility degradation in the channel, according to IEDM.
IBM will also brag about its 15 levels of copper interconnect to distribute power and clocks across an entire 600 square millimeter complex SoC for everything from video game consoles to corporate-caliber data centers.
Intel's paper will be called "A 14nm Logic Technology Featuring 2nd-Generation FinFET Transistors, Air-Gapped Interconnects, Self-Aligned Double Patterning and a 0.0588µm2 SRAM Cell Size."
IBM's will be called "High Performance 14nm SOI FinFET CMOS Technology with 0.0174µm2 Embedded DRAM and 15 Levels of Cu Metallization."
— R. Colin Johnson, Advanced Technology Editor, EE Times

iPhone 6+ Secret Sauce

Apple’s customers upgrade cycle to iPhone 6 plus will help many semiconductor companies. The key suppliers are in the article below -

"the biggest winders are Avago, SkyWorks and NXP, who have seen component content for the iPhone 6 increase by 30 to 90 percent compared to the iPhone 5S. Qualcomm also gains more carrier aggregation, and the NAND boost to 128GB "

The 64 bit A8 processor is the secret sauce giving the iPhone its battery and operation performance.

Ron
Insightful, timely, and accurate semiconductor consulting.
Semiconductor information and news at - http://www.maltiel-consulting.com/

What's inside the iPhone 6 Plus?

Summary: A teardown of the new iPhone 6 Plus reveals hidden innovations that Apple didn’t tell us about.

By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes for Hardware 2.0 | September 19, 2014 -- 12:37 GMT (05:37 PDT)

(Image: iFixit)

Today's the day that the iPhone 6 finally falls into the sweaty paws of the masses. And one of the first iPhone 6 Pluses off the production line has fallen into the hands of the iFixit team and is immortalized in their latest teardown.

Here is a listing of the chips that have so far been identified:Inside the iPhone 6 Plus are an array of chips from a number of vendors including Qualcomm, Broadcom, NXP, Texas Instruments, and Avago. And taking pride of place in the middle of all that is Apple's own A8 processor, and that's teamed with 1GB of Elpida LPDDR3 RAM.

• Apple A8 APL1011 SoC + Elpida 1 GB LPDDR3 RAM (as denoted by the markings EDF8164A3PM-GD-F)
• NXP LPC18B1UK ARM Cortex-M3 Microcontrollers (which is the proper name for the M8 motion coprocessor)
• Qualcomm MDM9625M LTE Modem
• Skyworks 77802-23 Low Band LTE PAD
• Avago A8020 High Band PAD
• Avago A8010 Ultra High Band PA + FBARs
• TriQuint TQF6410 3G EDGE power amplifier module
• InvenSense MP67B 6-axis gyroscope and accelerometer combo
• Qualcomm QFE1000 Envelope Tracking IC
• RF Micro Devices RF5159 Antenna Switch Module
• SkyWorks 77356-8 Mid Band PAD
• SK Hynix H2JTDG8UD1BMS 128 Gb (16 GB) NAND Flash
• Murata 339S0228 Wi-Fi Module
• Apple/Dialog 338S1251-AZ Power Management IC
• Broadcom BCM5976 Touchscreen Controller
• NXP 65V10 NFC module (likely contains an NXP PN544 NFC controller inside)
• Qualcomm WTR1625L RF Transceiver
• Qualcomm WFR1620 receive-only companion chip
• Qualcomm PM8019 power management IC
• Texas Instruments 343S0694 touch transmitter
• AMS AS3923 boosted NFC tag front end
• Cirrus Logic 338S1201 audio codec

According to Sterne Agee analysts Vijay Rakesh and Troy Cowdrey the biggest winders are Avago, SkyWorks and NXP, who have seen component content for the iPhone 6 increase by 30 to 90 percent compared to the iPhone 5S. Qualcomm also gains more carrier aggregation, and the NAND boost to 128GB is also good for memory suppliers Micron and Sandisk.

The battery is a monster 43 gram unit and is rated at 3.82 V and 11.1 Wh of energy, for a total of 2915 mAh, which is nearly double the capacity of the battery found inside the iPhone 5S, and slightly bigger than the battery inside the Galaxy S5. The new battery gives the iPhone 6 Plus up to 24 hours on 3G, and 384 hours of standby time, which is a huge increase over both the iPhone 5S and the iPhone 6.

(Image: iFixit)

There are also many more internal improvements that apple has made to the iPhone 6 Plus. The new iSight camera features phase-detection autofocus – common on DSLRs but relatively new to smartphones – and optical stabilization.

However, when it comes to the protruding "camera nubbin," even iFixit are worried about the impact and impact might have on it (pun fully intended).

"The lens cover may be made out of sapphire glass, but we're still concerned about what this design choice might mean for durability," iFixit writes in their teardown piece.

(Image: iFixit)

Also new is the vibrator assembly that replaces the old style "motor with an off-set weight" with an electromagnet that vibrates a weight. It's a pretty cool and novel approach to vibrations. I suspect the new design is not only more robust, but allows for a greater range of vibrations.

The power and volume buttons on the new iPhone now feature a rubber gasket that should help with keeping dirt, dust and moisture from making its way inside the handset.

iFixit awarded the iPhone 6 Plus a repairability score of 7 out of 10 (where 10 is the easiest to repair). Praised was the ease of access and how simple screen and battery replacements, and the fact that the fingerprint sensor cable has been rerouted and lengthened (the previous design made tearing the cable easy when opening the handset). However, they criticized the use of proprietary Pentalobe screws and the fact that Apple doesn't share repair information with third-parties.

IBM Selling Foundry Fabs

The article below discuss IBM announcement that it is selling its manufacturing operations. It will impact SOI (Silicon on Insulator), a process  that IBM specialized in.

It is not likely that Intel will buy an existing fab. Intel always duplicates an existing process in a current fab when they build a new fab 

It is just another example of consolidation chip manufacturing see in March 2012 Moore's Law End? (Next semiconductors gen. cost $10 billion

" chip industry without IBM will be a diminished industry."

IBM has been number 10 in foundry ranking for several years ( Top Semiconductor Ranking 2012 (Sales, Growth) 

More recent IBM dropped to number 11 in ranking (Top 13 Foundries Account for 91% of Total Foundry Sales in 2013)

Ron
Insightful, timely, and accurate semiconductor consulting.
Semiconductor information and news at - http://www.maltiel-consulting.com/

IBM fabs for sale – the semiconductor shockwave

 

david manners

 

10th February 2014

Following the semiconductor shock of IBM pulling out of chip manufacturing, David Manners considers who could buy and run the IBM fabs, whose processes include SOI and SiGe, and which supply manufacturing process technology to half the world’s major companies: Samsung, GloFo, UMC, ST, Renesas, NEC, Freescale, Toshiba and Infineon.

The biggest shockwave the semiconductor industry has had for years is the IBM announcement that it is pulling out of chip manufacturing.

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty has decided that IBM’s future is in software and services and chip manufacturing clearly doesn’t fall in either of these categories .

Moreover IBM’s chip manufacturing business lost $130 million last year and is slated to lose another $130 million this year while the capital costs to stay in the game are $5 billion a factory and rising.

That’s one way of looking at it.

The other way of looking at it is that IBM has been a stalwart of the world semiconductor industry, inventing the DRAM, mastering SiGe, SOI and much more besides and supplies manufacturing process technology to half the world’s major companies: Samsung, GloFo, UMC, ST, Renesas, NEC, Freescale, Toshiba and Infineon.

It is shocking to think IBM’s legendary R&D operation may be curtailed but, without the justification of a business outlet for its innovations, it may be.

One rather assumes that the obvious candidates for buying IBM’s fabs have already been tapped and that the announcement that Goldman Sachs has been appointed to look for a buyer for the fabs is to find an unobvious candidate.

The obvious candidates are Intel, TSMC, GloFo and Samsung.

However, Intel has net cash of only $7 billion and makes only CMOS chips, while IBM’s capacity includes processes like SOI and SiGe which Intel won’t need and the IBM fabs are not as advanced as Intel’s.

TSMC says it doesn’t want to operate foreign fabs; GloFo’s owners are said to be getting fed up with their capital-greedy chip investment and may not want to expose themselves further to the chip industry; Samsung already has as much operational and planned capacity in the USA as it needs.

So how about the non-obvious candidates?

Suggestions have been that Apple could enter into a jv with IBM to run the fabs. This would involve Apple putting a lot of money in to upgrade the fabs to the latest processes, but Apple has lots of money and IBM has the latest processes.

TowerJazz is another suggestion. The company has just formed a jv with Panasonic in which TowerJazz has a 51% share and which will own three Panasonic fabs in Japan.

The Panasonic deal gives TowerJazz’s already impressive array of specialty processes the addition of Panasonic’s specialty flows such as High Definition FSI for sensors and high voltage SOI power management technologies.

If TowerJazz now added IBM’s specialty processes like SiGe and SOI to its stable, it would become the world’s No.1 specialty fab.

Another suggestion is China. China has been trying, unsuccessfully, to build an indigenous chip industry for 30 years. Following the successful integration of IBM’s PC business into Lenovo, followed by the recent sale of IBM’s x86 server business to Lenovo, it would seem quite logical that a sale of IBM’s chip manufacturing would be to China.

Of course the European authorities, wedded to the idea of gaining 20% world market share in IC manufacturing, may see the opportunity to acquire IBM’s world-class process development capabilities as a sufficient reason to buy the fabs. IBM’s proficiency in SOI would give a boost to the European-developed FD-SOI process.

Then, of course, there are other emerging national tech players like Brazil and India who could see this as a once in a lifetime opportunity to acquire the basis for a chip industry.

Whatever the outcome of this, a chip industry without IBM will be a diminished industry.

Latest Transistor Channel (Moore Law Getting Too Expensive)

Moore law is getting too expensive to maintain the scaling march toward smaller devices. There are efforts to change the transistor channel as discussed below.

 

Some background on Fin-FET.

 

 

Ron

Insightful, timely, and accurate semiconductor consulting.
Semiconductor information and news at - http://www.maltiel-consulting.com/

 

 

Changing the Transistor Channel

Ending silicon’s central role in transistors could maintain the march of Moore’s Law

By Richard Stevenson / 24 Jun 2013 | 20:50 GMT

http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/design/changing-the-transistor-channel

 

Illustration: Harry Campbell

The transistor isn’t shrinking the way it used to. The best ones we have today are a patchwork of fixes and kludges: speed-boosting materials that push or pull on the silicon center, exotic insulators added to stanch leaks, and a new geometry that pops things out of the plane of the chip and into the third dimension. Now, to keep Moore’s Law going, chipmakers are eyeing another monumental change in transistor architecture.

This time, they’re taking aim at the current-carrying channels at the very heart of the device, replacing the silicon there with germanium and compound semiconductors known as III-Vs. If all goes well, these materials could usher in a new generation of speedier, less power-hungry transistors, allowing for denser, faster, cooler-running chips.

But for alternate transistor channels to be accepted, engineers must find a way to build them on industry-standard silicon wafers. That’s no small feat. The atoms in the alternative semiconductors are spaced farther apart than in silicon, making the crystals difficult to grow without creating device-killing defects.

Still, industry experts say, it is quite possible that silicon fabs will ramp up production of these transistors as early as 2017. One promising approach, under development in Belgium, saves on materials and minimizes defects by precisely depositing the new materials into nanometer-scale trenches etched into standard silicon wafers. The resulting chips could trim energy consumption at data centers, boost the battery life of mobile devices, and help keep Moore’s Law going well into the next decade.

Modern transistors are built into silicon wafers through the addition of trace amounts of other materials, called dopants. Dopant atoms alter the electronic properties of the material in order to form the three core parts of the transistor: the source and drain regions, which spit out and receive charge carriers, and the current-carrying channel, which runs between them. More at  Transistor Channel Future

30% Faster Smartphone w/FinFET Atom (Intel)

Mysterious Android device with Intel's Bay Trail (FinFET Atom) chip establishes AnTuTu benchmark records (43,416 points)

Today, a mystery Android 4.2.2 device running Intel’s next generation of mobile processors – Bay Trail (FinFET Atom) – has surfaced, which blows those chart-topping numbers clean out of the water. The smartphone or tablet posted an unheard so far score of over 43,000 (43,416 points). This is apparently at 1.1GHz, while running Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. The first benchmarks of Intel’s upcoming Bay Trail SoC is around 30% faster than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 clocked at 2.3GHz, the fastest ARM chip on the market. By comparison, the latest Galaxy S4 with LTE-Advanced support, with the Snapdragon 800, scores 31,491. To round out the comparison, Exynos 5 Octa (in the Galaxy S4) scores around 26,275, and Snapdragon 600 scores around 24,716. Bay Trail-T is Intel’s upcoming 22nm tablet-oriented SoC with four Silvermont cores, due out sometime this year (probably fall).

How good would the battery life be?

More on FinFET

Ron
Insightful, timely, and accurate semiconductor consulting.
Semiconductor information and news at - http://www.maltiel-consulting.com/

 Mystery device running on Intel’s Bay Trail thrashes competition

http://techivian.com/015-mystery-device-running-on-intels-baytrail-thrashes-competiton/

If you thought Snapdragon 800 is the summit at which mobile processing power is going to peak for at least 2013, wait until you read this. No it’s neither Tegra, nor Exynos that we’re talking about. Instead, the Snapdragon 800 might soon be dethroned by none other than an Intel Atom processor.

A mystery device codenamed byt_t_ffrd10 was spotted on popular benchmarking tool, AnTuTu. The device featured an Intel Bay Trail processor (that will be the successor to Clover Trail+) and was clocked at just 1.1GHz instead of its usual speed of 2.1GHz. Now this is where it gets exciting. The device managed to attain a score of 43416 on AnTuTu running on Android 4.2.2. To give a fair idea of how huge that number is, the recently launched Xperia ZU and Galaxy S4 LTE-A with Snapdragon 800 could only achieve close to 34,000 points in the benchmark test. Snapdragon 600 and Exynos 5 Octa fall even behind with close to 24,000 points and 26,000 points respectively.

Now the only concern remaining would be the power usage of Bay Trail processor. Of course if Intel could master that as well, we wouldn’t have to tell you what you can expect on Galaxy S5 or probably other flagships from LG and others.

SSD and NAND Shortage in 2013

Considering the increased cost of manufacturing of each new generation of memory and other type of chips and the consolidation of the industry, it is not surprising that we are having a shortage of flash NAND chips as is documented in the article below.



See earlier reports for the last few years Semiconductor Moore's Law Running out of Money and Nvidia: TSMC 20nm Essentially Worthless.


Ron
Insightful, timely, and accurate semiconductor consulting.
Semiconductor information and news at - http://www.maltiel-consulting.com/

The Great SSD Flash Shortage of 2013 - EOL 25nm, the pain and the future

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/5571/the-great-ssd-flash-shortage-of-2013-eol-25nm-the-pain-and-the-future/index.html


By: Chris Ramseye

Introduction

 

 

Within hours of visiting Crucial at CES, my phone was ringing off the hook. The people that I consult for wanted to know the inside scoop, 960GB in a $600 SSD with better than acceptable performance for their needs, companies wanted to know why and where - they were ready to place orders. Fast forward six months and they've placed orders, as has everyone else. Micron needed 20nm flash and it needed it fast. One of the biggest buyers, the government and over the past few weeks we found what they need all of this high performance storage for.

 

This story doesn't start with Micron or in 2013 for that matter. In a move to increase prices, last July Toshiba announced plans to cut NAND flash production by 30%. By September, OCZ Technology warned investors of a lower forecast citing a shortage of NAND chips used to build storage devices. In March 2013, Peter K. Hazen, Director of SSD Marketing, NVM Solutions Group sent a letter to customers with the excerpt below.

 

Intel remains very committed to our SSD business. As a leading NAND flash memory manufacturer with our IM Flash Technologies partner Micron, our NAND supply continues to grow every quarter and as a result we expect to have twice the SSD output in 2013 as we did in 2012. Through internal and industry forecasts, we originally felt this would be sufficient to meet our customers' demand.

 

Unfortunately, even 2x supply growth is not sufficient. Even in the first half of this year, we expect to ship more than 2x the units in Q1 and Q2 than the same quarters last year, but it is not enough to meet our aggregate customer demand. We recognize that this can be disruptive to your business and we are working with our customers worldwide to minimize the impact and maximize the output. This will also mean we will not necessarily be doubling output on every product line, but will focus output on the datacenter and professional client product lines to help satisfy demand on products that our customers have designed in, and will reduce the volume on products for segments that are more transactional in nature.

 

Intel has and will continue to launch new SSD products in 2013 that utilize the smallest, most cost-effective NAND available (20nm), and these products are the key to increasing capacity as we are able to ship more SSDs per wafer than prior generations. Please support the migrations to these new products as well as take advantage of their greater performance and new features, while still maintaining industry-leading quality and endurance.

 

From that point, things must have gone horribly wrong or amazingly well depending on what side of the fence you're on. Let's take a look at what the NAND flash shortage of 2013 means for manufacturers of consumer SSDs and what it means to you as well.

IMFT Customers Look to Flash Forward

  

The image above is from a review published by Hot Hardware on June 21, 2013. It shows an ADATA XPG SX900 256GB SSD with SanDisk 19nm Toggle Mode flash. On the surface, nothing in this image should surprise anyone. The SX900 is one of ADATA's high-performance products designed for gamers and power users. Seeing an LSI SandForce SF-2281 controller with the new B02 stepping paired with SanDisk flash is a good combination.

 

When the SX900 first launched a year ago it shipped with Micron NAND flash. The drive was later revised with Micron NAND purchased at the wafer level and packaged by ADATA. Packaging flash is a good way to reduce costs and ADATA has done it for their own and other companies' products for quite some time now. For ADATA to go back to using 'off-the-shelf' flash and invest in a radical change to the BOM, ONFi to Toggle, tells us a lot about the current state of 20nm flash from IMFT.

 

I receive emails nearly daily from shoppers trying to purchase Crucial M500 960GB SSDs. Newegg doesn't have stock at the time of writing and given the extremely low user reviews posted for this product, I'd say they've never had a steady flow of M500 in either 960GB or 480GB drives. Even Crucial.com, Crucial's own web store is 960GB-less. When you try to purchase this product SKU shoppers are met with the following message.

 

We are sorry, but the product you selected is temporarily out of stock. However, we are constantly replenishing our inventory and there's a good chance that this product will become available soon. Check back often to see when the product you selected is available, or make your purchase today�by returning to the previous page�and selecting a comparable product.

 

 

... and Hynix

 

Last month we talked about Corsair moving the base Neutron from 25nm IMFT flash to new Hynix 22nm flash. We rarely see SKHynix NAND in consumer SSDs. I can count the number of SSDs I've held with Hynix flash on one hand and I test more than my fair share. I would estimate TweakTown reviews roughly 80% of the consumer SSD SKUs released worldwide, around 80 products in 2012 published and many more in private tests.

 

The evidence leads us to believe that IMFT has yield issues with the new 20nm process or that the demand is so high, existing partners who once purchased in bulk simply can't get enough flash from the company to support demand.

Pain at the Manufacturing Level

 

Any flash shortage will increase prices for consumers; we went through the cycles in the DRAM market for years. Until recently though, consumer SSD prices were going in one direction. The transition from $1 per GB to 50c per GB was rapid, but just as fast, prices shot back up. Finding quality SSDs for less than a dollar per GB is still possible, but some products designed to sell closer to the 50 cents per GB are closer to $1 per GB mark.

 

One company we think is feeling the pain is OCZ Technology. OCZ hasn't released a consumer SSD with Toshiba Toggle flash since the Vertex 3 Max IOPS. Every product since then has shipped with IMFT flash, either 25nm or 20nm. The new OCZ Vertex 3.20 released as a low-cost SSD. OCZ has a long history of kicking every other companies' asses in the low-cost market. Not only did OCZ own that market, they drove other companies to lower flagship product prices just to compete. The new OCZ Vertex 3.20 uses IMFT 20nm flash and as you can see above, the price is much higher than the MSRP of $219.99 at this time.

 

We think that the 20nm flash shortage is hurting OCZ more than anyone else still in the consumer SSD game at this point. Patriot Memory, G.Skill and Monster Digital have already pulled out of the consumer SSD business and there are rumors of more companies to follow. The combined efforts of Patriot, G.Skill and Monster Digital don't equate to the volume of products shipped by OCZ Technology, but less competition in the consumer space hurts consumers.

 

 

... and for your Wallet

 

We don't expect consumer SSD prices to return to late 2012 prices anytime soon. This should worry anyone looking to purchase an SSD. Products designed for the mainstream performance market will hover just under $1 per GB, but high performance parts could surge when demand picks up in three to four months.

 

In our OCZ Technology Vertex 450 review we stated that OCZ plans to release a Vector 150 product and that production of the existing Vector product with 25nm flash was ending soon. Vector 150 could bring a new price premium that we haven't seen in many years.

Final Thoughts

 

 

The consumer SSD market will feel the pain from IMFT's flash cross over from 25nm to 20nm for at least a few more months. When IMFT gets their flash together, consumer SSD prices should return to 2012 levels - at least we hope so.

 

There are three bright lights at the end of the tunnel. The first is the obvious, IMFT increases yields on 20nm flash. The second comes from a report at SeekingAlpha. They speculate that Micron is converting a fab in Singapore from DRAM to NAND. This would decrease worldwide DRAM wafer production by six percent, but have a positive impact on the flash market.

 

The third light at the end of the tunnel is SanDisk and Toshiba's announcements of a transition to new 19nm 1y flash. Current Flash Forward 19nm flash is 19mm by 26mm cells. The new 1y flash moves to 19mm by 19.5mm. This will allow more flash per wafer and increase global supply.

 

Moving forward, the fabs have the rest of the SSD industry by the you know what's. SanDisk, Intel, Toshiba, Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix control the world's supply of flash. We have to wonder how long the SSD fab-less companies have left and what it will take to survive moving forward.