What’s exciting about this announcement is that we are using a 10nm process to produce the chip, which was created in response to the shift from hard disk drives (HDDs) to solid state drives (SSDs) and the consequent spike in NAND flash demand.

[Image courtesy of Samsung Tomorrow]

This is also our highest-density, single-layer memory product to date, which will significantly help to improve end-user experiences in PCs, servers and mobile devices as the industry’s highest performer. Additionally, the new chip offers more than a 100 percent increase in productivity compared to our 20 nanometer-class 64-gigabit chips.

At the end of the day, what will this breakthrough mean for the industry? On the OEM side, we’ll be able to deliver faster, more reliable memory solutions for server and PC applications. For consumers, we’ll begin to see a whole new class of mobile devices that are faster, thinner and lighter than ever before.

I know I’m excited for what the future holds. How about you?

Technorati Tags: 20nm, 3bit MLC NAND, high-density, Jim Elliott, NAND, Samsung, Samsung Semiconductor

The Uptime Institute is working with industry giants to maximize the efficiency of data centers by removing or downsizing inefficient servers. Samsung in 2013 is very much a part of those efforts. As the sole sponsor of the Uptime Institute’s Server Roundup Awards, we understand that data center funding is one of the most expensive and important investments a company makes. That’s why we’re helping to shape the agenda for the Uptime Institute’s annual symposium – an agenda stacked with real world examples of data center optimization. At the Symposium, many of the best minds in IT from more than 40 countries are gathering to discuss how the industry can drive the movement toward refreshing data centers with high performance and energy efficiency technologies. Energy efficient data centers are among the key challenges facing CIOs and CTOs today. I will discuss this in my Wednesday, May 15, morning keynote on “Green Initiatives for Transforming the IT environment.”

My keynote will address the critical role that energy-efficient components have in the data center, particularly in the areas of server memory and storage. I will discuss how green memory and solid state drives enable IT decision-makers to replace legacy and underutilized data center assets with server solutions that are high on performance and low on power consumption. During Samsung-sponsored Server Roundup panel, I will participate in what promises to be a lively discussion on the topic of server refresh. The panel will include 2013 winners– AOL and Barclays – who are already reaping the benefits of having maximized data center efficiency in their IT operations.

At the Uptime Symposium, you will hear firsthand how you can enable a win-win for your IT network and for the environment by improving cost efficiency and optimizing power consumption with the most advanced green technologies for the data center. Be sure to register to attend next week’s event (Santa Clara, CA May 13-16), and do let me know what you think afterwards.

Technorati Tags: energy-efficient, Green Memory, Jim Elliott, Samsung, Samsung Semiconductor, Samsung SSD, SSD, Uptime, Uptime Institute, Uptime Server Roundup, Uptime Symposium

Headquartered in South Korea, it’s not surprising that most of our employees are based there. But we realize that innovation is by no means geographically limited, so we are continuing to expand the extent of our operations elsewhere.  Clearly, a critical part of our expanding identity needs to be housed in the U. S.  We looked at Silicon Valley and states beyond California as possibilities, but when all was said and done, we selected Silicon Valley as a much larger home base for housing some of the best minds in the country. 

Here’s what we are contemplating: more than 680,000 square feet of “cutting edge” office space in north San Jose, and a couple of other large facilities elsewhere in the Valley. They’ll primarily be focused on R&D – talented individuals dedicated to helping us fulfill a vision of bold leadership in a rapidly changing marketplace. 

The facility in north San Jose, which is to replace our current, 2-story brick-facade facility, will include many innovative design features.  It will have 10 floors of office space with two partially open-air floors above ground that allow employees to be outdoors within the building. The futuristic-looking structure will be clad in white metal and clear glass in a way that reduces solar heat gain. The campus also will include a star-shaped cafeteria, rain gardens, a lawn garden, courts for basketball and badminton, and a spacious parking garage. 

We’re very grateful to the City of San Jose for working closely with us to accommodate our major expansion plans here.   Now, watch as we grow.  We’ll keep you informed step by step, milestone by milestone, ‘industry first’ by ‘industry first’.  And, most importantly, we want you to know that we greatly appreciate your support – all along the way.

Technorati Tags: City of San Jose, Jim Elliott, R&D, Samsung, Samsung Electronics, Samsung Semiconductor, San Jose, Silicon Valley

I had the opportunity to speak with Ron Moore, who works closely with Samsung in our pursuit of advanced process technologies at ARM, one of our closest foundry partners. Take a look at what Ron had to say about the value of 14nm FinFET and what it’s like working with Samsung Foundry.

Q&A with Ron Moore, Director of Strategic Accounts Marketing, ARM’s Physical IP Division 

1.       What is your role at ARM?  
My team is responsible for working with ARM’s foundry partners to identify technology collaborations, jointly promote the resulting proof-points, and support lead customer adoption of advanced process technologies.

2.       From ARM’s perspective, what are the key advantages of 14nm FinFET technology, and how will this process technology help improve end-devices and enhance the end-user experience? 
Power efficiency is an essential element of all ARM technology-based SoCs.  Samsung’s 14nm FinFET technology provides the performance scaling expected from each new process generation, plus it allows designers to use lower nominal operating voltages.  The mobile device users/consumers will see the improved performance during their user experience in activities such as web browsing or game play with a noticeable extension of battery life.

3.       What does 14nm FinFET allow ARM to do in design innovation that wasn’t possible with previous generations? 
ARM partners design their SoCs with dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) to achieve peak performance when needed and power efficiency for lower workload tasks.  The lower nominal operating voltage of 14nm FinFET expands the voltage ranges in both underdrive and overdrive conditions.  In an ARM® big.LITTLE™ processing system, we can achieve higher performance on the top end of the range as well as higher efficiency in the middle and lower operating ranges.

4.       For ARM, what are the biggest challenges with using 14nm FinFET? 
In today’s high-performance, low-power SoCs, designers are using automated EDA flows to implement a wide range of low-power techniques such as clock gating, power gating, multi-Vt, multi-VDD and adaptive scaling in the form of dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) or adaptive voltage scaling (AVS).  As we look to deploy ARM technology on 14nm FinFET, we need to ensure that we can achieve power efficiency with these techniques or new alterative methodologies.  At the same time, we are keenly aware of time-to-market pressures that create the need for accelerated core-hardening of ARM processors.

5.       How does the collaborative model among Samsung, ARM and the EDA players (Cadence, Mentor and Synopsys) help alleviate some of these difficulties facing designers with this advanced technology node? 
The collaboration model established by Samsung, ARM, and our EDA partners allows for concurrent development of process technology, processor technology, and design methods / tools.  The engineering iterations enabled by early collaboration and silicon proof-points such as the ARM Cortex®-A7 processor implementation on Samsung 14nm FinFET allows ARM to gain understanding of the design challenges and find candidate solutions for use by our mutual customers.  I would like to add that ARM appreciates the support Samsung provides during these early collaborations.

6.       What does the future look like for industry collaboration in the foundry ecosystem?
The design challenges will continue to intensify as we push toward smaller geometries, new transistor structures, materials, and lithography.  The R&D investment to bring these technologies to the industry will continue to grow as well.  We anticipate an increase in collaboration across the industry to speed the development and deployment of cost-effective semiconductor manufacturing.

Many thanks to Ron for taking the time to provide us with this unique and informative perspective. We have an exciting road ahead of us, and we’re looking forward to the innovations that will continue to come out of the Samsung-ARM partnership. 

We work with many partners in the foundry ecosystem. Who else would you be interested in hearing from? I’d love to hear your suggestions in the comments below.

Technorati Tags: 14nm FinFet, Ana Hunter, ARM, ARM big.LITTLE, mobile, Ron Moore, Samsung, Samsung Foundry

The JEDEC Mobile Forum 2013 will spotlight these accomplishments and related new standards in a range of presentations, several of which are being made by subject matter experts from Samsung Semiconductor.  Our presenters as well as those from other leaders in the industry, including Agilent Technologies, ARM, Micron, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, SK hynix, Tektronix and Toshiba, will hone in on where we’re headed over the next few years, not only for mobile memory and storage, but also for the infrastructure that supports an ever-increasing number of mobile applications.  The Forum will look at why mobile devices such as smartphone and tablets are becoming faster, sleeker and more responsive in meeting the varied needs of consumers. 

Sponsored by the Universal Flash Storage Association (UFSA), the JEDEC Forum will feature keynotes by myself, “How Memory is Propelling the Mobile Revolution”, Richard Wietfeldt from Qualcomm, and Agilent’s Perry Keller on behalf of UFSA.  In addition, Forum speakers will discuss the coalescing of memory and storage around LPDDR4, LPDDR3E, eMMCs, UFS and Wide I/O 2.

To obtain the event’s agenda or to register, visit the official JEDEC website. You can also direct general questions to Angie Steigleman at angies@jedec.org.   This is a conference that anyone interested in the growth of the mobile market sector should not miss. Hope to see you there!

Technorati Tags: JEDEC, JEDEC Mobile Forum, Jim Elliott, mobile devices, Mobile Forum, Samsung, Samsung Semiconductor, smartphone, tablet, UFSA, Universal Flash Storage Association

I’d like to take a few minutes to highlight what I think are the most salient points that underscore the superiority of SSD storage over hard disk drives for data center applications. 

• Speed: Hard drives have spinning disks that can do a max of 400 IOPS. SSDs can go up to 101,000 IOPS or faster. This is equivalent to 250 spinning disks! Simply put, SSD performance cannot be matched by spinning disk – not by a long shot.
• Efficiency: Power consumption is significantly lower in SSDs. I’m speaking about idle power as well as active power. A recent Microsoft TPC-H study showed overall system power savings of 94% to be gained from using an SSD. 
• Reliability: No matter how you look at it, enterprise SSD’s provide superior reliability. For example, MTBF (mean time between failure) for HDD’s is 1.6 million hours; SSDs provide 2 million hours.
• Consistent Performance: SSDs have no moving parts and, therefore, are not susceptible to RVI (rotational vibration interference). SSDs are free from the undesirable performance dips or drive failures induced by RVI, which are one of the hardest problems to troubleshoot in the enterprise space.
• Pricing: SSDs were traditionally priced in a way that left them unaffordable for many system architectures.  That is not the case anymore. Advances have been made in underlying NAND flash and controller technologies that have resulted in lower overall pricing, which has in turn moved IT professionals to not only replace HDDs but to also invest in higher SSD capacities.
• Cost Advantages: In many cases, the cost of an SSD can actually be less than a hard drive! HDD densities keep going up and up. However, for apps that don’t require huge amounts of capacity (such as boot drives for servers), lower density SSDs provide a much better price point over HDDs. 

These are key reasons why the enterprise market is moving towards SSDs over HDDs.  I think you will agree that it’s quite a compelling case.  We’d be interested in knowing what other advantages you have found with using SSDs in the enterprise space.  Let me know by emailing us at ssd@ssi.samsung.com.

Technorati Tags: enterprise, hard disk drives, HDDs, Microsoft, Microsoft TPC-H, Ryan Smith, Samsung, Samsung Semiconductor, Solid State Drives, SSDs

In this post, Voices@SamsungSemiconductor looks at some trends coming out of MWC – and how component technology is helping to fuel the progress that’s being made.

• Thinner Tablets: Not surprisingly, portability was a key topic of discussion at MWC 2013, with manufacturers showing off  tablets thinner than ever before as consumers continue to demand thinner and lighter mobile devices . Advancements in component technology are facilitating this trend. For example, our memory chips are 50% thinner than they were five years ago.

• Security for Work and Play: With Samsung KNOX, Samsung is looking to address the mobile security needs of enterprise IT without invading the privacy of employees. This is yet another example of how components are enabling one of the largest trends – BYOD – currently taking place in the mobile market.

• Software as a Market Differentiator: Software is increasingly become a key differentiator among mobile products. At MWC, we saw this with new demos of Firefox OS, and Ubuntu Touch, among others. Hardware must adapt to allow for these software shifts. At Samsung Semiconductor, we’re anticipating this shifts by bringing more sophisticated components to the market – from eight-core processors for intensive computing, to flexible OLED technology for enhanced displays in the future. Our technology will allow the latest software to both run smoother and look better.

We hope this post gave you more food for thought on the latest in mobile industry trends. We’d love to hear your thoughts on how components are enabling other industry trends in the comments section below. 

Technorati Tags: #MWC13, BYOD, Mobile World Congress, Samsung, Samsung KNOX, Samsung Semiconductor, tablets

Battery capacity is struggling to power devices and keep up with the astounding pace of innovation as mobile devices become bigger, yet thinner, boast brighter displays and faster processors, and increasingly provide PC-like performance in key areas like enterprise and gaming.

Batteries for electronic devices are currently enabled by lithium-ion technology, which has improved 300% in the past twenty years.  However, mobile devices powered by this technology have advanced more than a thousand-fold during the same time frame.

With battery performance expected to improve by less than 5% each year, Samsung has focused on other options to resolve the battery life challenge. We have introduced mobile memory solutions, including:

• Ultra-lower power consuming memory components to extend operating and standby time on mobile devices by many hours
• Smaller and thinner memory chip packaging to free up space for larger batteries

Technorati Tags: lithium-ion, lithium-ion technology, Mobile World Congress, Samsung, Samsung Semiconductor, smartphone, tablet

[Image courtesy of Toyota]

As you can see from the image above, the Furia Concept was surrounded by a custom-built structure with more than 30 of Samsung’s 46” transparent LCD panels. This was the first time an automotive company used our transparent display technology to reveal a vehicle at a major auto show – and what a reveal it was!

Before the big reveal, the panels were opaque so that the audience couldn’t see the vehicle. But when it was time, the darkness slowly dissipated, revealing the incredible new car. As the structure rotated, the words “Furia” appeared on the display and flashes of light helped Toyota emphasize the sexy, sleek and youthful nature of the car’s design.

While this was certainly one of the most innovative applications for transparent display technology I’ve seen yet, the possibilities are endless.

For your viewing pleasure, I’ll leave you with a video of the reveal, but first, I’d like  to know what you think are other interesting potential applications for transparent display technology?

Technorati Tags: Samsung, Samsung Display, Samsung Semiconductor, Toyota, transparent display technology

To enable true mobile computing at the component level, Samsung Foundry has been hard at work on process and design innovation in our most advanced logic fabs, enabling customers to manufacture the latest chips used in the newest electronic devices. Last month, we announced our most recent advancement in process technology in collaboration with our ecosystem partners ARM, Cadence, Mentor and Synopsys: 14nm FinFET.

14nm FinFET allows Samsung to manufacture customers’ chips with an innovative design infrastructure that brings significant gains in performance alongside low-power consumption for mobile devices. We’ll be discussing our newest advancements in process node technology and the need for greater collaboration among foundries, ecosystem partners and customers at Common Platform Technology Forum on February 5 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. IBM, Samsung and GLOBALFROUNDRIES will be co-hosting the event as part of the Common Platform Alliance.

Join us at the forum for:

• A keynote speech by Dr. KH Kim, Executive Vice President of Foundry at Samsung Electronics. Dr. Kim will discuss how Samsung Foundry innovation is accelerating access to comprehensive customer solutions at the forefront of technology, leveraging a deeper collaboration model across the entire semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem to reduce risk and speed up time-to-market for mobile components.  (10:30 a.m. – 11 a.m.)
• A technical session with Dr. Shawn Han, Vice President of Foundry Marketing at Samsung Electronics, alongside Dr. Antun Domic, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Implementation Group at Synopsys. Dr. Han and Dr. Domic will take us through a deep dive not only on the 14nm FinFET process and its technological benefits, but also detail the level of collaboration among the Common Platform Alliance, ecosystem partners and fabless companies enabling this degree of innovation. (1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.)

Register for the conference.  If you’re unable to make it out in person next month to Santa Clara, the event will also be streaming live.

What do you think will help drive further collaboration in the semiconductor industry? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

Technorati Tags: 14nm, 14nm FinFet, Advanced Foundry Technology, Common Platform, Common Platform Technology Forum, Samsung, Samsung Electronics, Samsung Foundry