TechOnline

The most innovative DRAM technology

The winner in this category is the 50nm 1Gbit DDR2 SDRAM from Micron Technology Inc. Micron's latest 50nm 1Gbit DRAM has achieved an impressive 25Mbit per mm2 density with only 40mm2 of chip size. This is about 10% more efficient compared to the other competitors in the DRAM industry. This 50nm DRAM has the smallest DRAM cell size with 50nm wordline pitch.  This DRAM technology implements advanced front-end-of-line and back-end-of-line features such as raised S/D regions and copper metallization. A noble scheme was used to improve the mechanical stability of the memory capacitors without sacrificing overall capacitance

Michael Sporer, Director of Micron's Enterprise Segment accepts the Award for Most Innovative DRAM

"Micron is honored to receive these awards from such a renowned analysis company as Semiconductor Insights. The awards exemplify Micron's continued technology design and process innovation leadership for both DRAM and NAND flash," said Brian Shirley, vice president of Micron's Memory Group. "Working alongside our partners, Micron continues to drive the advancement of memory technology."

The most innovative NVM technology

The winner in this category is the 43nm 16Gbit MLC NAND Flash from Toshiba Corporation. Toshiba's 43nm NAND Flash has the innovative All Bit Line architecture with reliability measures such as dummy wordline in the 64 wordline NAND string which is critical in maintaining die efficiency and reliability of NAND Flash cell. Use of high-k inter-poly dielectric material is another innovation worth mentioning. These innovations lay the groundwork for the future of NAND Flash with three bit per cell and four bit per cell to improve bit density and lower manufacturing cost while meeting growing performance demands of NAND Flash devices.


"We're honored to receive this recognition of the innovations in our 43nm NAND flash memory, which enable performance advantages in our Single-Level Cell and Multi-Level Cell NAND flash product lines as well as our advanced solid state drives," said Scott Nelson, vice president, memory, for Toshiba America Electronic Components.

The most innovative Mobile Processor technology

The winner in this category is the 45nm Atom processor from Intel. Intel's Atom processor has played a pivotal role in creating a new product category called MID (Mobile Internet Device) which is found in Netbook and Nettop. Implemented with the latest 45nm high-k metal gate process technology from Intel, Atom process implemented various power saving features with rich multimedia content processing features enabling this new and emerging products. Equipped with the most advanced process technology and commercial success and recent announcement to start offering the Atom processor core designs to wider industry, Intel's Atom processor deserves the recognition as the most innovative mobile processor.

Doris Murphy, Senior Product Marketing Engineer for Atom Processors, Intel Embedded Group, accepts the award for Most Innovative Mobile Processor

The runner-ups

This year's Insight Awards received an unprecedented amount of attention and participation from dozen of companies. Due to the pace of innovations that the industry is making, the selection committee had extremely hard time choosing winners in all of the categories. Although only one device can win some of the others deserve mention. Samsung's 58nm 1Gbit DDR2 SDRAM and Hynix's 54nm 1Gbit DDR2 SDRAM are also very innovative DRAM products with different approaches " different interconnection technologies, different memory cell arrangements, and overcoming technical challenges with efficient die layout are some of the things that SI observed. Samsung's 42nm 16Gbit MLC NAND Flash is also a very efficient product in NVM category. A startup company named Sandbridge nominated their 4G/LTE ready programmable baseband processor. This is the only startup company to make our list of finalists. Qualcomm's Snapdragon, Texas Instrument's OMAP3530, Samsung's applications processor for the Apple iPhone were all nominated as finalists too. The latest 40nm FPGA device from Altera is worth mentioning for their efforts to improve FPGA capacity and features with this advance process technology. AMD's 45nm Quad-Core Opteron processor was another notable finalist.

Making innovation takes years of hard work and perseverance. Recognizing the same takes different level of expertise and effort as it takes a broader perspective to look at each and every technology which is so unique and innovative in its own way. Two decades of experience in working with the semiconductor industry and investing in its own capabilities to stay on top of the innovations the industry make allows Semiconductor Insights to provide the most comprehensive approach in recognizing the advancements and innovations which are critical for the continued success of the semiconductor industry.