Memory the (not) forgotten critical phone component

18. March 2011 by cameron.

Finally I found a headline that is inspiring enough to blog on!

When I first started this company and tried to raise funds, I frequently heard the response, “why would I want to do anything with my phone but make a phone call?” Needless to say, those Venture Capitalists did not fund me.

The analysts eventually see the obvious. I got the following link in my email today from CTIA SmartBrief:

Memory — the forgotten but critical phone component

The link actually points to the market for mobile DRAM, but DRAM is only one component of the memory system for (smart) phone memory. In the interest of making a short headline, they reduced the wording. The analogies are clear. Smartphones are rapidly following the same growth path that drove the PC market:

The hardware hits a minimum performance level. We owe our appreciation to Intel for the PC processor and many thanks to ARM for the phone CPU. Finally the phone is smart.

Connectivity reaches a minimum level of usability. This happened with the internet and the dial up modem and eventually DSL for the PC. With the smartphone, it required 3G networks.

Next the interface becomes user friendly. Think Microsoft with Windows then Apple with the iPhone OS (a.k.a. iOS).

Next applications explode. This does not happen until the environment is ripe. It requires millions of people to start writing software. This happens when it is easy (thanks to Sun for JAVA) and profitable. Writing applications for the PC was not easy, so it took years to develop, but thanks to Windows platform and x86 backward compatibility, the application base eventually got huge. As a result of controlling the OS, Microsoft dominated. The next time around it happened much faster. First Apple’s app store followed by Rim (Blackberry apps) and then Google with the Android open platform enables this on the phone. These models work because it strikes right at the opportunistic strength. Almost anyone with a good idea can write app. If they write a good app, it is very profitable. See this link from 2008 iPhone Developers Go From Rags to Riches. In one month, January 2011 over $200million was raised in venture capital for this market. Once again the VCs catch on after the market explodes.

So this is the meat of the post. Finally we have the infrastructure and people start to really care about the phone response. The smartphone has finally reached the point where the applications will start to get hungry. More power applications require a powerful  memory subsystem. This is driving the market. The first obvious signs in the mobile DRAM and NAND flash markets. The other market for memory is hidden. The CPU requires multiple levels of memory. Small storage is required for processing in an application. Next are the levels of Cache. To meet the form factor required for a handheld device, a significant amount of memory including the first and second level cache must be implemented as embedded SRAM on the chip with the CPU. This drives a market for embedded SRAM. The ever increasing compute requirements of smartphones as well as a host of other mobile devices ( iPads, XOOM, netbooks, and more) will continue to drive the market for embedded memory.  The embedded memory market has seen recent consolidation with the acquisition of Virage Logic by Synopsys. Mobile Semiconductor is expanding their presence in the mobile embedded SRAM market by introducing silicon proven high speed SRAM compilers that target the low power process technologies such as SMIC 65nm LL process and the TSMC 40nm LP process.

The system performance is driven not only by the components, but the control of these components. The value of the SSD controller market is an important part of the performance of storage systems. Mobile Semiconductor is exploiting the opportunity in the SSD controller market.

Keep tuned and check in at www.mobile-semi.com for future posts!

Cameron

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