SemiSerious

After relatively quietly becoming the dominant force in image sensors in the short span of three years, Micron is beginning to show more signs of becoming an Intel-like force in the industry.

The most obvious example of this was the Patent Power article in the November 2006 IEEE Spectrum. 1790 Analytics conducted the first ever patent survey for Spectrum. Micron was ranked as the overall top patenting company just ahead of traditional powerhouse IBM. The survey looked at more than simple numbers of patents granted in order to judge the strength of the portfolio.

Speaking of that patent power, I don’t doubt that a large part of Micron Imaging’s success can be attributed to the intellectual property they acquired through the purchase of Photbit. Photobit was a spinoff of Jet Propulsion Labs which is considered by many to be the birthplace of the CMOS active pixel image sensor. The marriage of imager and manufacturing know-how certainly spawned the success of the imaging business at Micron.

Micron recently moved to build upon the imaging division’s success with the acquisition of another company with a lot of industry-leading expertise in the field - Avago. The Avago purchase also adds another big pile of quality patents in the field given their lineage and the years of prolific patent filings at Hewlett-Packard. (HP is ranked third in the Spectrum list, nowadays, though, only under systems and software.)

I think the connection between Micron and Intel goes beyond their joint venture for NAND flash. Micron is starting to sound a bit like the chip giant in the news. On Friday, Semicondutor International ran an article about Micron’s recent ribbon-cutting at a materials testing lab at UW. Micron launched this research facility with around $1M of cash and equipment. The goal of the lab is more fundamental and forward-thinking than you might expect from a manufacturer of commodity devices like image sensors and DRAM. The mandate is to study “combinatorial” materials for possible silicon replacements. This is intended to go beyond the only such material to make it into large scale CMOS production so far - SiGe.

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