DUBLIN, Jan. 20, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Emerging Memories Ramp Up Report (2019)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This detailed 171-page report addresses technology developments in non-volatile solid-state storage and memory technologies and the impact on manufacturing and test equipment. These non-volatile memory/storage products will impact the digital storage hierarchy including hard disk drives and flash memory.

The report includes a PDF document and a power-point file with all figures and tables from the report to use within your company. You will also receive a free subscription to the Digital Storage Technology Newsletter.

The report projects that 3D XPoint Memory, with significant gigabyte shipments in 2020-2021, and with an assumed important price advantage versus DRAM will grow to a baseline level of 54.7EB (exabytes) of shipping capacity by 2029. 3D XPoint baseline revenues are projected to reach $16.1B by 2028.

It is projected that total MRAM and STT MRAM baseline annual shipping capacity will rise from an estimated 13.88TB in 2018 to 614PB in 2029. Standalone MRAM and STT-RAM baseline revenues are expected to increase from about $22M in 2018 to $3.8B by 2029. Much of this revenue gain will be at the expense of SRAM, NOR flash and some DRAM, although STT-RAM is developing its own special place in the pantheon of shipping memory technologies.

The demand for MRAM and STT-MRAM will drive demand for capital equipment to manufacture these devices. While MRAM and STT-MRAM can be built on standard CMOS circuits supplied by large semiconductor fabricators, MRAM and STT MRAM do require specialized fabrication equipment for the MRAM layers that are similar to or the same as that used in manufacturing the magnetic read sensors in hard disk drives.

The increasing demand for nonvolatile memory-based upon MRAM and STT MRAM will cause total manufacturing equipment revenue used for making the MRAM devices to rise from an estimated $26M in 2018 to between $238M to $1.4B by 2029 with a baseline projected spending of $854M.

Current memory technologies including flash memory (NAND and NOR), DRAM and SRAM are facing potential technology limits to their continued improvement. As a result, there are intense efforts to develop new memory technologies. Most of these new technologies utilize nonvolatile memory technologies and can be used for long-term storage or to provide a memory that does not lose information when power is not applied. This offers advantages for battery and ambient powered devices and also for energy savings in data centres.

The memories addressed in this report include PCM, ReRAM, FRAM, MRAM, STT MRAM and a variety of less mainstream technologies such as carbon nanotubes. Based upon the level of current development and the characteristics of these technologies, resistive RAM (ReRAM) maybe a potential replacement for flash memory. However, flash memory has several generations of technologies that will be implemented before a replacement is required. Thus, this transition will not fully occur until the next decade at the earliest.

Micron and Intel's introduction of 3D XPoint Memory, a technology that has high endurance, performance much better than NAND, although somewhat slower than DRAM, and higher density than DRAM, could impact the need for DRAM. Intel introduced NVMe SSDs with its Optane technology (using 3D XPoint) in 2017 and began to ship NVDIMM Optane products in 2019, in support of its newest generation of server processors, the Second-Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors. 3D XPoint uses a type of phase change technology.

Magnetic RAM (MRAM) and spin-transfer torque RAM (STT MRAM) will start to replace some NOR, SRAM and possibly DRAM within the next few years and probably before RRAM replaces flash memory. The rate of development in STT MRAM and MRAM capabilities will result in gradually lower prices, and the attractiveness of replacing volatile memory with high speed and high endurance non-volatile memory make these technologies very competitive, assuming that their volume increases to reduce production costs (and thus purchase prices).

Ferro electric RAM (FRAM) and some ReRAM technologies have some niche applications and with the use of HfO FRAM, the number of niche markets available for FRAM could increase in number.

Moving to a nonvolatile solid-state main memory and cache memory will reduce power usage directly as well as enable new power-saving modes, provide faster recovery from power off and enable more stable computer architectures that retain their state even when power is off. Eventually, spintronic technology, that uses spin rather than current for logic processes, could be used to make future microprocessors. Spin-based logic could enable very efficient in-memory processing. Several emerging memory technologies are also being used in neuromorphic computing experiments.

The use of a nonvolatile technology as an embedded memory combined with CMOS logic has great importance in the electronics industry. As a replacement for a multi-transistor SRAM, STT MRAM could reduce the number of transistors and thus provide a low cost, higher-density solution. A number of enterprise and consumer devices use MRAM, based on field switching, to act as an embedded cache memory, and this trend will continue.

The availability of STT MRAM has accelerated this trend and allows higher capacities. Because of the compatibility of MRAM and STT-RAM processes with conventional CMOS processes, these memories can be built directly on top of CMOS logic wafers. Flash memory doesn't have the same compatibility with conventional CMOS. The power savings of nonvolatile and simpler MRAM and STT MRAM, when compared with SRAM, is significant. As MRAM $/GB costs approach those of SRAM, this replacement could cause significant market expansion.

1. The Authors

2. Executive Summary

3. Introduction

4. Why Emerging Memories Are Popular

• Scaling Limits For Entrenched Technologies
• 3D Nand Flash Technologies
• Future Flash Memories
• Embedded Nor And Sram Scaling Challenges
• Stand-Alone Nand & Dram Scaling Concerns
• Technical Advantages
• Potential Cost/GB Advantages

• Physical Vapor Deposition
• Ion Beam And Plasma Etching
• Photolithography (Patterning)
• Other Process Equipment
• Magnetic Annealing
• Device Testing
• MRAM And STT MRAM Consortia

17. Phase Change Manufacturing Equipment

18. Memory is Driving Semiconductor Capital Spending

19. Market Projections For Mram, And 3D Xpoint Memory

• 4DS
• Adesto Technologies
• Applied Materials
• Apres A/S
• ASML
• Avalanche Technology
• BAE Systems
• BeSang
• Bruker
• Canon
• Canon-Anelva
• Cobham-Aeroflex
• Crocus Technology
• Crossbar
• Cypress
• EverSpin
• Ferroelectric Memory Company
• Fujitsu Semiconductor
• GigaDevice Semiconductor
• Global Foundries
• Grandis
• Hitachi High Technology
• Honeywell
• HPE
• Hprobe
• IBM
• IMEC
• Integral Solutions
• Intel
• Junsung Engineering
• Keysight Technology
• Kioxia (Toshiba Memory Corporation)
• KLA Tencor
• Known
• Lake Shore
• Lam Research
• LETI
• Magnetic Solutions
• MagOasis
• Micron Technology
• MicroSense
• NaMLab
• Nanomagnetics Instruments
• Nantero
• NEC
• Neoark
• Nikon
• Numen
• NVE
• NXP
• Ovonyx
• Oxford Instruments
• Panasonic
• Plasma Therm
• Qualcomm
• Rambus
• Ramtron
• Reliance Memory
• Renesas Electronics
• Samsung Semiconductor
• Seagate Technology
• Singulus Technologies
• SK hynix
• Smart Tip
• SMIC
• Sony
• Spin Memory
• Symetrix
• TCLab
• TDK
• Texas Instruments
• Thin Film Electronics
• Tokyo Electronics
• Tower Jazz
• TSMC
• Ulvac
• UMC
• Unidym
• Veeco
• Weebit Nano
• Western Digital

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/9v5kur

Research and Markets
Laura Wood, Senior Manager
[email protected]

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