November 14th, 2008

AMD's Extreme Makeover: What the new roadmaps reveal

Posted by John Morris @ 1:57 pm

Categories: AMD, Desktops, Intel, PC gaming, PC graphics, Servers, multicore processors, notebooks, quad-core processors, semiconductors

Tags: Platform, Plan, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Chip, DDR3, Notebooks, Desktops, Processors, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets

Lost in all of the (inaccurate) commotion yesterday about AMD entering the netbook market were much broader changes in the company’s product plans as it struggles to regain profitability and keep up with a deep-pocketed Intel. In the past year, AMD has announced plans to spin-off manufacturing, abandoned efforts to compete for “all screens” including TVs and smartphones, and at yesterday’s analysts’ meeting, revealed major changes to its server, desktop and notebook roadmaps. The extent of these changes is clear when you compare the new plans to the presentations at AMD’s previous analysts’ meeting less than a year ago.

AMD’s “Market Opportunity”

Last year AMD executives were talking up plans to compete in everything from servers to cell phones. Processors and GPUs for servers, desktops and notebooks would still be the bulk of the business, but the acquisition of ATI gave the company the portfolio to sell more chips for digital TVs and handhelds. These new markets would increase AMD’s TAM, or total addressable market, by a combined $6.4 billion in 2007. The company has since been forced to retrench.

Last month, AMD completed the sale of its digital TV business to Broadcom, and it is seeking a buyer for its handheld division. AMD is now focused strictly on chips for servers, desktops and notebooks–including GPUs–though the total market has grown to $46.5 billion by 2009 according to yesterday’s presentation. (This implies a compound annual growth rate of about 10%–the market for commercial and consumer IT was $38.3 billion in 2007–which seems plausible.) Though it makes for a less interesting product portfolio, this is a smart strategy–AMD simply doesn’t have the resources to compete in all of these areas.

Before (late 2007)

After (now)

The Notebook Roadmap

The biggest changes are in AMD’s notebook roadmap, where executives announced six new processors slated to appear between 2009 and 2011. Last year, the big news was Shrike, the first platform that would include a processor, code-named Swift, with both a CPU and a GPU on the same silicon die. This was set to appear sometime in 2009 on the new 45nm process technology. Now these APUs (application processor units)–for both notebooks and desktops–have been pushed all the way back to 2011 and will debut at 32nm.

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October 22nd, 2008

Samsung says it is no longer interested in SanDisk

Posted by John Morris @ 7:52 am

Categories: Uncategorized, semiconductors

Tags: SanDisk Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Memory Industry, EE Times, Flash Memory, John Morris

Samsung has abruptly dropped its $5.8 billion bid for the memory card-maker SanDisk.

In a letter to SanDisk’s board, Samsung Electronics CEO Yoon Woo Lee wrote that the recent quarterly results heightened concerns about SanDisk’s ability to weather a protracted downturn in the memory industry and the broader economy. In addition, SanDisk had just announced a preliminary agreement with its manufacturing partner, Toshiba, to in effect sell some of its share of the NAND flash back to Toshiba in exchange for cash and relief from some other financial obligations. EE Times has posted the full text of Samsung’s letter.

For its part, SanDisk said it remained open to discussions with Samsung, but only at a price that it felt reflected the value of the company’s intellectual property. And it questioned whether Samsung really wanted to buy the company in the first place. (The SanDisk press release is here.) The negotiations (or lack thereof) were also complicated by a key licensing agreement between Samsung and SanDisk that is set to expire in less than a year. SanDisk earns hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties from this agreement each year.

SanDisk’s quarterly results were disappointing, but it’s hard to believe that they were a surprise to Samsung. The entire memory industry has been suffering through a severe downturn for some time, and the math is simple. Memory suppliers invested heavily in expanded production, which resulted in sharp oversupply that is expected to extend from 2007 through the first half of next year. As a result memory prices have fallen below production costs, even for suppliers with the most advanced technology. Initially this mainly affected the DRAM suppliers, but eventually it caught up with the NAND flash players as well.

Ultimately it seems SanDisk and Samsung were too far apart on price to even begin to tackle other formidable issues. Here is a link to my previous post on the technology that made SanDisk an attractive target for Samsung.

October 11th, 2008

Report: Three Intel Nehalems in November

Posted by John Morris @ 5:40 am

Categories: AMD, Desktops, Intel, Semiconductor architecture, dual-core processors, multicore processors, notebooks, quad-core processors, semiconductors

Tags: Desktop, Mobile, Intel Corp., Chip, Nehalem, Server Processor, Chipsets, Semiconductors, Processors, Network Technology

Intel will launch its first three Nehalem processors on November 17, according to a report on the site Expreview.com. These Bloomfield high-end chips will include the 3.2 GHz Core i7-965XE ($999), 2.93GHz Core i7-940 ($562) and 2.66GHz Core i7-920 ($284).

Nehalem is manufactured using the same 45nm process as current desktop and mobile chips, but it has a new design or microarchitecture. I’ve written previously about some of the new features in Nehalem.

Next year Intel will release mainstream desktop processors, as well as mobile and server versions of Nehalem. Like the Core i7, the Lynnfield desktop and Clarksfield mobile processors will use a separate GPU; the Havendale desktop and Auburndale mobile version will integrate a GPU in the processor package, thought it will also work with a separate GPU. The Lynnfield and Clarksfield processors will have four cores, while Havendale and Auburndale will be dual-core chips. The server processors are currently referred to as Nehalem-EX.

Desktops PCs with these first Core i7 chips will also have new, high-end motherboards based on the Intel X58 (or Tylersburg) chipset. Even though it has several new features such as integrated memory controller and Quick Path Interconnect, the X58 platform will still use a chipset that consists of two separate chips–like current systems that have a Northbridge and Southbridge. Next year’s Ibex Peak (for Lynnfield and Havendale desktop chips) and Ibex Peak-M (for the Clarksfield and Auburndale laptop chips) chipset will in fact be a single chip–or a two-chip solution if you count the processor.

The details on the X58 platform have been slowly leaking out since the Computex tradeshow last June where motherboard makers show off their products. Several enthusiast sites such as Anandtech and Tom’s Hardware have posted previews, but we’ve yet to see any real performance results.

AMD is set to launch its first 45nm processors (code-named Shanghai) sometime this quarter. As with Barcelona, the first versions will be server processors followed by desktop parts most likely in early 2009. The new 45nm process should help AMD reach high frequencies (and cut manufacturing costs), but there’s a big gap between the current 2.6GHz Phenom X4 9550 and a possible 3.2GHz Intel Core i7-965XE, so it seems unlikely that AMD will wrest the performance crown from Intel with Shanghai.

October 7th, 2008

AMD finally announces "asset-smart" plan; new Foundry Company created

Posted by John Morris @ 4:44 am

Categories: AMD, semiconductors

Tags: Asset, Foundry Networks Inc., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Manufacturing, Asset Management, Financial Services, Operational Planning, Business Operations, John Morris

AMD and a technology investment company backed by the government of Abu Dhabi have established a new semiconductor company that will manufacture AMD’s advanced processors. The new company–currently known as “The Foundry Company”–will take over all of AMD’s existing manufacturing facilities, including the two leading-edge fabs in Dresden, Germany, and will construct an additional fab in upstate New York.

After eight years at the helm of AMD as CEO, and more recently as chairman, Hector Ruiz will become chairman of The Foundry Company. Doug Grose, currently AMD’s senior vice president of manufacturing operations, will become CEO of The Foundry Company, which will be based in Silicon Valley. Most of the 3,000 employees at the new company will come from the fabs in Dresden, though about 300 process engineers from AMD offices in Sunnyvale, Austin and East Fishkill will also join The Foundry Company. The Foundry Company will join the IBM alliance for developing both silicon-on-insulator (SOI) and bulk silicon process technology through the 22nm generation.

The investment company, Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) will invest $2.1 billion to purchase its stake in The Foundry Company, including $1.4 billion invested directly in the new company and $700 million paid to AMD to purchase shares in the new company. ATIC also assumed some AMD’s formidable debt and committed significant funding–up to $5.7 billion over five years–to expanding manufacturing operations. This includes completing Fab 38, an advanced 300mm wafer fab in Dresden, in 2009, followed by construction of the Luther Forest facility in Malta, New York. Later The Foundry Company will consider a new fab in Abu Dhabi depending on market conditions.

“Today’s announcement significantly alters the global semiconductor industry,” said ATIC Chairman Waleed Al Mokarrab. “This is great news for those communities, but most importantly it is great news for the semiconductor industry.”

When the deal closes around the end of this year, AMD will own 44.4% and ATIC will own 55.6% of The Foundry Company.

As part of the announcement, Mubadala Development Company, a sovereign wealth fund of the government of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, that currently owns 8.1% of AMD increased its stake to 19.3% through the purchase for $314 million of 58 million newly-issued AMD shares with warrants to purchase 30 million additional shares. Mubadala also gets a seat on AMD’s board.

AMD had been promising this “asset-smart” plan for so long that it had become the butt of jokes among industry analysts. The announcement turns the page on a difficult period for AMD, marked by the disappointment of its Barcelona native quad-core processor, and begins a new chapter in which AMD becomes a fabless semiconductor company. AMD’s President and CEO, Dirk Meyer, promised the combination of the manufacturing spin-off and Mubadala increased investment would “result in a stronger and more tightly focused AMD.”

September 22nd, 2008

What memory technology is Samsung after?

Posted by John Morris @ 7:56 am

Categories: semiconductors

Tags: 3D, NAND Flash, SanDisk Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., NAND, Technology, Toshiba Corp., Cell, Chip, Flash Memory

Samsung Electronics recently made public its $5.8 billion offer for SanDisk, a major manufacturer of memory cards. There are plenty of possible business motives behind this bid including the hefty royalties that Samsung pays to SanDisk to use its flash technology, and SanDisk’s strong retail brands and distribution. But I’ll leave that to the financial analysts. The more interesting question is precisely what other memory technologies SanDisk possesses that enticed the world’s largest producer of NAND flash memory to attempt an uncharacteristically large and risky acquisition.

SanDisk doesn’t directly manufacture the NAND flash chips that go into cards. Instead it works with Toshiba through several joint technology and manufacturing agreements. SanDisk supplies some of the capital and its flash know-how, and Toshiba operates the factories, or fabs. In exchange, SanDisk gets a steady supply of chips from Toshiba’s fabs, though when business is booming it also purchases a small amount of chips from other “non-captive” sources. SanDisk then puts these chips in products such as microSD cards for cell phones, SD cards for digital cameras, and USB drives.

The main technique for reducing costs and increasing the density of flash memory is to build chips using increasingly finer features. Today advanced NAND flash is manufactured using 40nm process technology. A single chip manufactured at this node can store up to 16Gb (or 2GB) of data. Micron is working on a 34nm 32Gb chip, and the rest of the industry won’t be far behind. By using an advanced lithography technique called double-patterning to print the circuits, the industry can push it down to 20nm, but that’s probably the end of the road for NAND flash, at least in its current incarnation.

If you can’t shrink the cells anymore, then you need to increase the amount of data that can be crammed in each cell. In 2005, SanDisk and Toshiba developed the first 8Gb chip by using MLC (multi-level cell) technology, which stores two bits of information per cell. Today the vast majority of NAND flash is MLC, though costlier SLC (single-level cell) flash is still used for applications that require higher levels of performance or better endurance. SanDisk holds the key patents on MLC-based flash, which is why Samsung already pays them hundreds of millions in royalties each year.

The next logical step is X3, or three bits per cell, and eventually X4. As it turns out SanDisk has cornered this as well. Earlier this year SanDisk announced that it had begun mass producing the industry’s first X3 NAND flash, a 16Gb chip jointly developed with Toshiba and manufactured at 56nm. The X4 technology comes from SanDisk’s November 2006 acquisition of M-systems. X3 isn’t as efficient as physical scaling because it requires some extra peripheral circuitry to make it all work–that’s why SanDisk’s current 43nm 16Gb MLC is still more cost-effective. If all else is equal (process node, density and wafer size), an X3 chip costs about 20% less to produce. That might sound like a lot, but in an industry where the average selling price of the chips has been dropping 60% each year, X3 is really only a stopgap measure.

Eventually the industry will need an entirely new technology, and SanDisk believes it has the solution in 3D memory, the technology it gained through the January 2006 acquisition of Matrix Semiconductor. The concept behind 3D memory is that you can simply stack arrays of cells vertically to increase storage density rather than increasing the size (and cost) of the chip. It’s like building a skyscraper rather than expanding the footprint of a building. SanDisk says it has more than 200 patents around 3D memory, and it already sells a basic form of 3D memory known as OTP (one-time programmable) that is used in applications such as Nintendo game cartridges. TSMC, a semiconductor foundry in Taiwan, manufactures 3D OTP at 80nm, and is currently working on a version using advanced 45nm process technology.

The trick is figuring how to make a version of 3D memory to which you can write, erase and rewrite data (3D R/W), like with NAND flash. Last quarter SanDisk signed a long-term agreement with Toshiba to jointly develop 3D R/W, which it says will replace NAND flash “within a decade.” There is no shortage of other contenders. Toshiba, Samsung, and Spansion/Saifun are all working on a technology known as charge-trap flash (CTF). And Numonyx, the spin-off of Intel and STMicroelectronics, has developed a phase-change memory (PCM). None of these seem close to commercialization.

There is one other major area where SanDisk has technology that may be attractive to Samsung. As flash memory becomes more complex, it requires increasingly sophisticated microcontrollers to keep track of all the data being written, read and erased to the storage device. The controllers perform critical chores such as error-correction and wear-leveling to compensate for some of the physical limitations of flash. There are companies that specialize in flash controllers such as Phison and Silicon Motion, but SanDisk has its own expertise in controllers for cards, USB drives and SSDs. This expertise should be especially valuable as more SSDs based on cheaper MLC flash start to hit the market.

August 11th, 2008

Via stops making chipsets for Intel, AMD systems

Posted by John Morris @ 8:49 am

Categories: AMD, Desktops, Intel, Nvidia, PC graphics, VIA Technologies, multicore processors, semiconductors

Tags: via technologies inc., advanced micro devices inc., intel corp., chipsets, semiconductors, hardware, components, john morris

And then there were three . . .

After months of rumors, Taiwan-based Via Technologies has confirmed that it will stop producing chipsets for PCs that use Intel and AMD processors. A company spokesperson told the hardware site Custom PC that the third-party chipset business was on its way out, and said Via would instead focus on developing entire PC platforms.

Via is best-known for producing the chipsets and low-power processors found in small-form factor desktops. More recently, it has received a lot of press for its work on netbooks. HP uses Via’s C-7 chip in its Mini-Note 2133, and at the Computex tradeshow in June, Via announced a new chip, the Nano, which competes head-to-head with Intel’s Atom.

With chipsets, however, the writing was on the wall. In the second quarter, Via and its S3 Graphics joint venture combined shipped 1.1 million GPUs, or 1% of the total market; in the same quarter last year it shipped 6.26 million, representing nearly 8% of the market, according to Jon Peddie Research. Meanwhile Intel has grown its share to more than 47% of the total GPU market, followed by Nvidia and AMD.

The introduction of new graphics technology, such as SLI/CrossFire and hybrid graphics, as well as the new memory interface in Intel’s upcoming Core i7, have made it more challenging for third parties to license the necessary technology and develop chipsets.

Via said it will continue to develop chipsets for its own Nano chip, following the trend set by Intel, and more recently AMD, of selling entire platforms, rather than individual PC components, which are becoming increasingly commoditized. Earlier this month the newswire DigiTimes reported that Nvidia had told motherboard makers it was preparing to exit the chipset business as well, but the company quickly denied it.