SemiSerious

In one of three plenary talks given at the 2006 International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), Dr. Chang-Gyu Hwang, president and CEO of Samsung Electronics’ Semiconductor Business, suggested that we are about to experience the largest semiconductor industry transition ever. Chip Shots and Physorg have more detailed accounts of this talk.

An entertaining Dr. Hwang predicted, “The approaching era of electronics technology advancement – the Fusion Era – will be massive in scope, encompassing the fields of information technology (IT), bio-technology (BT), and nano-technology (NT) and will create boundless opportunities for new growth to the semiconductor industry.” Dr. Hwang believes this long period of new growth will begin around 2010.

Bio-tech, health care, robotics, aerospace, solar cell, and environment-friendly R&D fields are expected to combine in critical ways to herald the dawning of the “New Era of Fusion Technology.” Semiconductor advancements will play a pivotal role in enabling this new trend, Dr. Hwang said.

“Unlike the paradigm shift from the personal computer to mobile and digital consumer applications, the introduction of massive-scale fusion technology – which represents the organic convergence of IT, BT and NT, will bring together a wide range of technology-related professions as the foundation for a new technology frontier,” Dr. Hwang said. “This historic new frontier will change the way we develop and harness semiconductor technologies in substantially improving the level of day-to-day convenience for consumers.”

“Commencement of the Fusion Era depends on the successful development of high-density, ultra-small, multi-featured semiconductor chips and multi-faceted, cross-industry solutions. To enter the new era, Dr. Hwang said it is essential to first overcome today’s limits in nano-technology.” You can see the rest of the SEC press release here.

It all sounds quite grand. Perhaps not for the company that set its sights on displacing Intel as the largest semi manufacturer. To-date at Samsung, the “Fusion” era belongs to memory. Once again, this should come as no surprise since Samsung has long dominated both DRAM and flash. But what does it have to do with multi-featured chips and cross-industry solutions?

Samsung’s first fusing exercise was the OneNAND. Not planning to be outdone, the phase-change memory unit shrunk the acronym from PCRAM to PRAM. Obviously, the explanation of PRAM from the corporation planning to dominate the industry was “Perfect RAM.”

The latest fusion device from Samsung is OneDRAM. As you might expect, this new device offers “better performance, with faster speed and lower power consumption and a lower chip count, with reduced area coverage on the printed circuit board.”

Taking nothing away from the technological achievements of the Samsung memories, it seems the One devices are more high density devices leveraging low cost processing to nibble at the edges of applications more typically using special-purpose memory.

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