Award-Winning Engineering Innovation
Micron leads the industry in developing the designs and processes that consistently deliver market-driven solutions, providing greater capacity in smaller designs without sacrificing quality and performance.
20nm NAND: 2011 Semiconductor of the Year
Our industry-leading 20nm NAND is acknowledged for its superior design, right down to the memory cell. UBM TechInsights named it as 2011 Semiconductor of the Year after extensive review —including examination of the device at the package and die levels and analysis of the process technology, memory cell configuration, and materials identification.
Our award-winning 20nm NAND technology has enabled our groundbreaking 128Gb MLC device, which sets a benchmark in storage silicon. This part provides a terabit of storage in a single eight-die package, doubling the storage capacity of our existing 20nm 64Gb NAND device. Its smaller footprint frees up more board space for other critical mobile components such as screen, battery, or even more storage, and meets increasing demand for more local storage in consumer mobile devices.
Smaller and Better
Process shrinks require tinier, more complex cells, which translates to lower performance and endurance. With 20nm NAND, however, we developed innovative new technology that will allow our 20nm NAND to hit the same endurance and performance specifications as the last NAND generation (25nm), providing a better product and a more sustainable path for NAND scaling and development.
Continued Leadership in NAND Innovation
The introduction of 20nm NAND underscores our technology leadership in NAND development. The chart below shows the innovation pace of NAND developers. Since forming the joint venture IM Flash Technologies (IMFT) in 2005, Micron and Intel have implemented process shrinks roughly every 18 months, well ahead of competitors. Because we hit these milestones sooner, we’re also better-equipped to further refine these technologies for adoption in demanding applications like SSDs and servers.
Why Do NAND Shrinks Matter?
The growth in data storage, combined with new tablet and smart phone features, is demanding more from NAND Flash technology, especially for higher capacities in increasingly smaller designs. 20nm NAND reduces the footprint needed for storage, freeing up extra space for improvements like a bigger battery, a larger screen, or the addition of another chip to handle new features.
Measuring just 118mm2, our 64Gb 20nm NAND was the first 8GB MLC (two bits per cell) device that fit into a microSD™ form factor, providing high-capacity, small-form-factor storage for saving music, video, e-books, and other data on mobile devices like smart phones and tablets.
Our new 128Gb MLC NAND device provides the highest storage capacity of any single die on the market, enabling more storage for portable devices.
Patent Leadership
For the past several years, Micron has consistently ranked among the top 10 most-prolific patent registrants in the United States. But it’s the quality of those patents that really counts, and that’s where we truly excel. In October 2011, the Patent Board ranked Micron’s patents first in science strength for the second consecutive year. Our patent portfolio also ranked fifth in technology strength among all semiconductor companies. These high ratings for science and technology strength underscore our emphasis on the spirit of innovation that has yielded one of the most valuable patent portfolios in the world. It’s this added value that enabled us to maintain our lead over several much larger companies who actually recorded more patents for the year.
Awards for our process advancements are the visible result of years of cumulative R&D work by some of the best scientists and engineers in the industry. These kinds of innovations are our core strengths and continue to move our business toward greater efficiency and put us in a stronger competitive position.
About Micron's Innovations Blog
For videos and forward-looking design discussion, tune into our Innovations Blog. Our blog highlights recent technology developments—from advanced storage solutions to the cutting edge of server, computing, and mobile memory.