Micron has confirmed it will indeed buy Chipzilla’s interest in their IMFT flash foundry joint-venture based in Lehi, Utah. The intent to do this was first announced by Micron in October last year at an estimated cost of $1.5bn. It means that from the closing date of the transaction Intel will need to have its Optane 3D XPoint …

Taiwanese chip-maker UMC, under legal siege from the US Department of Justice, has reportedly pared down its DRAM project team by nearly one half, signalling victory for rival Micron. There were some 300 or so engineers working on UMC's DRAM project, but the Nikkei Asian Review reported that 140 are to be reassigned, presaging …

The three DRAM suppliers are scaling back production growth as memory demand falters with no sign of recovery. The DRAMeXchange research outfit has said annual DRAM capital expenditure (CAPEX) growth has gone negative for 2019 as Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron respond to weak seasonal demand in the first quarter and beyond. …

Chip maker Micron has slammed the brakes on production and expenses entering calendar 2019 in anticipation of falling demand. The admission came as the company reported revenues of $7.9bn for Q1 of fiscal '19 ended 29 November, up 16 per cent year-on-year but an abrupt slowdown from the 40 per cent expansion in the previous …

SSD market stats for calendar Q3 from DRAMeXchange, IDC and TrendForce and Wells Fargo have highlighted three things: Samsung remains the global undisputed sales heavyweight; the PC industry will suck up more SSDs than disk drives next year; and NVME is the enterprise SSD interface of choice. Samsung, with 36 per cent revenue …

AnalysisIt has been revealed that open source Ceph storage systems can move a little faster than you might expect. For those who need, er, references, it seems a four-node Ceph cluster can serve 2.277 million random read IOPS using Micron NVMe SSDs – high performance by any standard. Micron has devised a 31-page Reference Architecture …

China has claimed to have gathered "massive evidence" in its ongoing investigation into Korean chip giants Samsung and SK Hynix and the US's Micron for alleged violations of its antitrust laws. memory logic board China's make-your-own DRAM ambitions growing all the time READ MORE In June it was revealed the Chinese …

Micron has started shipping its 2.5-inch 5210 ION flash drive, positioning it as a 10,000rpm disk drive replacement offering much better read access performance for more or less the same price. The drive was first announced in May. The low cost (low for flash, at least) comes from its use of 64-layer 3D NAND in QLC (4bits/ …

SK Hynix has finished work on a 512 Gbit, 96-layer, 3D NAND chip with 1Tbit, and 3bits/cell (TLC) and 4bits/cell (QLC) coming later. Currently SK Hynix is shipping 72-layer 3D NAND chips. The 96-layer chip uses charge trap flash (CTF) tech, as opposed to floating gate, and its logic circuitry is placed underneath the flash …

The US Department of Justice has unveiled charges against two companies and three individuals it says have been stealing trade secrets from American memory chipmaker Micron. The DOJ claims United Microelectronics Corporation and Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit – along with individuals Stephen Chen, JT Ho, and Kenny Wang – all …

The US department of commerce has issued an edict that effectively bans American companies exporting technology to Chinese DRAM maker Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Company. The order was issued on Monday, US time. The Chinese company was caught up in the legal battle between Micron and UMC. Micron went to the federal …

Micron has announced its intent to buy out Intel's interest in Intel Micron Flash Technologies (IMFT), the pair's flash and 3D XPoint foundry joint venture. silicon Intel and Micron downgrade 3D Xpoint relationship from friends with benefits to partners READ MORE Contractually, Micron has the option to do this from 1 January …

Micron's consumer SSD brand Crucial has pushed out an NVMe minicard flash drive that looks almost identical to Intel's 600p. The M.2 2280 format Crucial P1 arrived just months after Intel's 660p and uses the same 64-layer QLC (4bits/cell) 3D NAND. Intel and Micron share the output from their IMTF flash foundry joint-venture. …

Semiconductor giant Micron is investing $3bn in its Manassas, Virginia foundry to develop DRAM and flash for autos, IoT, drones and industrial automation. Micron's site is located about 65km (40 miles) west of Washington DC and the company said the development would create around 1,100 jobs. President and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra …

Samsung has started mass production of the world's first QLC (quad-level cell) consumer SSD. QLC is 4 bits/cell flash technology and a next step in cell bit capacity from the current TLC (3 bits/cell). Foundries belonging to Intel/Micron, SK Hynix and WD/Toshiba have started producing QLC chips and, in some cases, SSDs already …

China’s state-backed 3D NAND fabber, YMTC, has claimed it will bring out memory speed flash chips next year. nerd with briefcase Intel to Tsinghua: I know Micron didn't work out – please buy our 3D NAND READ MORE Yangtze Memory Technologies Co (YMTC) is developing a 64-layer 3D NAND with a potential 3Gbit/s data access speed …

CommentMicron's commercial discussions with Intel over 3D XPoint have concluded that the tech partnership will be dissolved once second-gen development is completed next year. Intel's Optane XPoint product sales have been disappointing and Micron is facing a collapse in sales of its XPoint chip output to Intel. Intel is, of course, …

The ongoing war between US-based memory maker Micron and Asian DRAM manufacturers went nuclear today. The Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court, based in southeast China, has, we're told, blocked the sale of a huge volume of Micron kit in the Middle Kingdom amid an ongoing patent row. That ruling, we understand, would stop …