January 7, 2004 – Infineon Technologies, Munich, Germany, has entered the flash market with the introduction of a NAND-compatible 512Mbit flash chip based in its TwinFlash technology.
Initial production of the chip, developed through a JV with Saifun Semiconductors, has already begun at Infineon’s 200mm DRAM facility in Dresden, with planned capacity of 10,000 wafer starts/month using 170nm process technologies.
Infineon plans to shrink its TwinFlash feature sizes to 110nm in the next node, enabling densities of up to 2GBit. Using TwinFlash technology, the company says it can produce flash chips on existing DRAM equipment with practically no investment in new tools, said Harald Eggers, CEO of the memory products business group.
Infineon hopes to become one of the top three NAND players by 2007 — Gartner Dataquest pegs the NAND flash memory market at $3.36 billion in 2003, and $4.4 billion in 2004.