“The appetite for memory over the years has been seemingly insatiable,” said Brian Harrison, chief executive officer at Numonyx. “The key is to create new market opportunities and new sources of demand by delivering products and technologies with new capabilities and new functionality. By that measure, we are well on our way to satisfying the appetite.”
A look at history has shown this to be true, especially in the memory industry. In the 1980s, Numonyx introduced the very first flash memory technology, called NOR flash. It provided a new function called electrical erase that allowed the contents of the memory to be changed electrically. This new functionality caused a transformation in manufacturing, support and service.
In the 1990s, mobile telephones were growing rapidly, but were still too big to be truly mobile. The introduction of electrically writeable flash was key in the ability to store code and data in small, thin and light phones. Then a new technique of placing multiple chips in a single package came to market, allowing two, three, six or more memory and logic devices to be combined in the same space or package.
“Obviously the dramatic reduction in cost per bit that has occurred over this time plays a critical role in the explosive growth we’ve seen, but the innovations that helped bring new features and applications into ever smaller spaces was truly key,” added Harrison.
Looking ahead, Numonyx is applying its memory and silicon expertise to new technology advances to deliver new functionality that promises to address solutions to existing problems while also delivering new capabilities. Phase Change Memory – or PCM – has the potential to enable the next wave of innovation.
Harrison used the latency of today’s PCM as an example how the technology can transform an application like solid state disks which are increasingly being adopted in enterprise class servers. In the example, Harrison took the ability to randomly grab information stored anywhere in the chip and equate the time it takes to equal to one day. It would take a PCM device one day to read the information. When compared to one of today’s SSDs, it would equal 17 days. For a traditional hard drive, however, that random access to the data would take nine years.
Harrison continued the example to say that future generations of PCM and PCM-architectures he called “storage class memory PCM” would only take 30 minutes to access. “By any definition, PCM is a potentially disruptive force,” said Harrison. “This is an area where we truly excel – we are focusing on the things that have made us successful to date: staying close to our customers and delivering innovative memory solutions.”
About Numonyx
Numonyx designs and manufactures a full complement of integrated NOR, NAND, RAM and Phase Change non-volatile memory technologies and products to meet the increasingly sophisticated needs of customers in the cellular, data and embedded markets. Formed in April 2008, Numonyx combines the technology and manufacturing expertise of the flash memory divisions of Intel Corporation and STMicroelectronics, and is dedicated to providing high density, low power memory technologies and packaging solutions to a global base of customers. Additional information about Numonyx is available at www.numonyx.com
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Contact:
Mark Miller
d: 916.377.8459
m: 916.380.2090
mark.miller@numonyx.com
Roberto Arrigoni
d: +39 039 603 5732
m: +39 348 709 8651
roberto.arrigoni@numonyx.com