Twenty-five years after Ronald Regan made his famous demand in Berlin "Tear down this wall," Micron, Samsung and early hybrid memory cube consortium members promised to tear down the memory wall [ see IFTLE 38, "IFTLE 38 of Memory Cubes and IvyBridges – more 3D and TSV"], which was viewed as holding up the progress of future microelectronic products.
Since recent IFTLE reports have indicated that delays in 2.5/3D commercialization have been due to a lack of TSV memory stacks (or at least TSV memory stacks at the right cost point) [see IFTLE 140 "Important Apple Rumors; Xilinx not Deserting 2.5D;Book to Bill Improving"], we thought it was appropriate to take a look at the current status of HMC. Updates on their progress can be found here [link].
ARM, HP, and SK Hynix joined former members including Micron, Samsung, Altera, IBM, Microsoft, AMD, Fujitsu, ST Micro, Marvell and Xilinx in June 2012.
Micron said it will deliver engineering samples of 2 and 4 Gb versions of the stack by this summer with commercial production scheduled for late 2013 or early 2014.
2012 Semiconductor Revenue
2012 Top 10 Semiconductor Vendors
2012 Materials Market
Semi just reported that the global semiconductor materials market decreased 2 percent in 2012 to $47.11B the first decline in three years. Packaging materials exceeded wafer fabrication materials for the first time ever $23.74B vs $23.38B.
For the third year in a row, Taiwan is the largest consumer of semiconductor materials due to its large foundry and advanced packaging base. Materials markets in China and South Korea also experienced increases. The materials market in Japan contracted 7 percent, with markets also contracting in Europe and North America.
For all the latest on 3DIC and advanced packaging, stay linked to IFTLE.