A Continual Leader in Process Innovation
Manufacturing process innovation is at the heart of successful semiconductor companies, and Micron continues to lead the way with advancements in NAND and DRAM process technologies. In the tradition of our legendary 6F² design feature size shrink—which was years ahead of competitive technology—we continue to unveil innovations that solidify our leading technology position.
25nm NAND: World’s Most Advanced Process
We lead the semiconductor industry with the world’s smallest process technology, 25nm NAND. Developed by Intel and Micron’s NAND joint venture, IMFT, 25nm isn’t just the smallest NAND process technology—it’s the smallest and most advanced semiconductor process technology altogether. In fact, since forming our joint venture with Intel in 2006, we’ve doubled the density of our NAND products roughly every 18 months. We began production with a 50nm process, moved to a 34nm process in 2008, and introduced the world’s first 25nm process technology in early 2010.
Our most advanced product on the 25nm technology is our 64Gb triple-level cell (TLC) NAND. This device is the first TLC to be built on 25nm and delivers the same capacity as our 64Gb MLC, but in a die that is more than 20% smaller. Listen to what Kevin Kilbuck, Director of NAND Strategic Marketing at Micron, has to say about the storage potential of 25nm TLC NAND.
Micron and Intel Announce 25nm 64Gb TLC
Rapid Advancements in NAND Process Technology
The scanning electron microscope images below illustrate our rapid year-to-year gains in NAND process refinement. In just a few years, we’ve significantly outpaced the industry standard.
25nm NAND—The Most Innovative Memory Process
In their 9th Annual Insight Awards, UBM TechInsights awarded Micron and Intel’s NAND Flash joint venture, IMFT, the Most Innovative Memory Process for their 25nm NAND process technology. IMFT beat out other leading memory processes, once again demonstrating their innovation and manufacturing prowess and breaking technology scaling barriers.
The coveted Insight Awards honor companies who have shaped the semiconductor industry over the past year, through technical achievements and innovations. The program consists of four distinct categories and is judged by a panel of leading industry experts and senior analysts from UBM TechInsights.
42nm DRAM—A Superior Process for a Superior Product
Our 42nm DRAM technology is built on our leading-edge copper metallization process and proprietary cell capacitor technology. We invested in copper process technology nearly a decade ago because it offers the greatest product quality and excellent long-term reliability. This high quality allows us to push our designs to peak levels of performance—a requirement for high-end DRAM applications like servers, which demand the strictest standards of quality and performance.
Building on years of expertise in copper metallization has enabled us to stay on the cutting-edge of DRAM process design and innovation. Through our R&D partnership with Nanya, we continue to build on this strong foundation to deliver high-quality and highly reliable products.
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 March of 2009 The Patent Board ranked Micron’s patents second among all semiconductor companies. Our score was bolstered by high ratings for science strength and industry impact, which underscores the fact that we continue to build 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 more videos and forward-looking design discussion, tune into our Innovations Blog. Our blog highlights recent technology developments—from the advanced storage solutions, to the cutting edge of server, computing, and mobile memory.