podcast length 41min

Listen in on the Denali podcast with my conversation with Numonyx's CTO, Ed Doller, as he shares with me what they have and where they are going, in order to restore profitability for Numonyx, how they view the NOR marketplace's future and how they think Phase Change Memory (PCM) fits into the overall flash market equation.

After more than a year of preparation and getting things in order, STMicro and Intel finally launched their joint venture to make flash Memories, Numonyx, on March 31 of this year. Headquartered in Switzerland with major stakes by the two participating companies, but managed by Francisco Partners, Numonyx will take control of several STMicro and Intel fabs, inherit their strong market positions in NOR flash from both and a less imposing NAND presence from STMicro (IMFT, Intel's JV for NAND Flash with Micron is a separate entity), plus strong technology and market positions from both Intel and ST.

In brief, Numonyx brings a greater market position to NOR flash than Spansion currently has (a combined $800M for Numonyx vs. $570M revenues for Spansion for 1Q08 just ended, according to iSuppli), and rather different technical roadmaps for the coming years. Both are feeling the heat from Samsung's nascent interest in NOR, after focusing entirely on NAND Flash until about 18 months ago. For certain, the NOR market is troubled, and all players have been losing money for more than two years. NOR MB growth is slow compared to NAND, but compares favorably with DRAM! Seems that all the industry chit-chat has been about NAND, not NOR, for some time, reflecting NAND's apparently greater promise for radical displacement in the electronics marketplace.