podcast length 19min

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DDR3 DRAMs have been waiting for a long while in the shadows for their time on center stage. The JEDEC spec was completed more than four years ago, and Samsung showed a working silicon DDR3 DRAM prototype in February 2005. But the gestation period for these most advanced DRAM products is long, and the road to market is tortuous, no matter how superior they may appear on paper or in their initial forms, compared to the current standard bearer. Much infrastructure has to be set up, early design kinks for the DRAMs and their systems have to be worked out, multiple financial considerations among the system and DRAM vendors’ operations have to be aligned. It is a time consuming task.

However, the embedded space is not as beholden to nearly as many preconditions in order to get going as the PC market is, since most of those systems are completely defined by the system maker, and not dependent on chipsets, standard bus frequencies, 'industry consensus', ‘DRAM price points’, what Intel and AMD are thinking and doing, and other such constraints. Embedded system designers can define their own systems, and can often utilize DDR3 DRAMs in more performance-oriented and cost-effective ways. Embedded system designs are using DDR3 DRAMs now, though they are only just beginning to appear in traditional PCs.

This 19-minute podcast captures an interview, featuring Denali’s Technical Marketing Director, Marc Greenberg and I as we discuss some of the similarities and differences between designing DDR3 DRAMs into PCs, compared with designs in the embedded space.

podcast length 20min

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Denali has just posted on its website an interview with Dr. Tom Coughlin, entitled "Expert Opinion on 'What's Holding up the SSD market?'" in which he discusses with Denali many of the uncertainties and complicating factors that will have to be resolved before SSDs (NAND Flash-based Solid State Drive) can significantly displace magnetic media in the broad range of computing products.

Tom is an Industry Veteran of many years in the trenches in the hard drive business, and originator of two well-attended storage conferences, the first associated with the January Consumer Electronics show, Storage Vision, and the second scheduled in April, Creative Storage. He is also the author of dozens of technical papers, a part-time College instructor, and worked for many of the leading (or now defunct) hard drive companies.

While there are certainly as many points of view about the future development of the SSD market place as there are analysts, we feel that Tom's viewpoint is exceedingly important and well-informed, given his deep experience in the industry.

As with all Denali webcasts/podcasts, if you have questions, go ahead and leave a comment. They will be answered by the presenter/speaker ASAP.

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.