Contour Semiconductor, founded in 2001, is a developing a new generation of
non-volatile chips that overcomes the scalability, durability and performance
limitations of NAND flash. The patented Contour technology also extends to a
new non-volatile memory fabrication process that reduces the process steps by
65% compared to NAND flash, dramatically reducing the cost of a building a
memory fab and creating a chip cost profile that makes the technology affordable
for a complete spectrum of consumer and enterprise applications, from cell
phones and tablets to big data storage.
See also:- Contour's
technology page |
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Editor's comments:- April 23, 2014 - I was lucky enough to stumble across
Contour Semiconductor recently as a result of 2 recent updates by my linkedin
contacts. But as you can see - the company was established a long time ago and
has been working on new memory circuits, architectures and related
manufacturing processes.
Until recently - planar flash memory still had
plenty of roadmap life left - which gave little incentive for memory makers to
risk investing in disruptive wafer processing techniques (in comparison to
incrementally improving storage density in ways they had already done many
times before).
Even the shift towards so-called "3D flash" -
can be viewed as the least risk and least number of disruptive new technologies
route to attain higher capacity storage devices which leverage as much as
possible of traditional memory design IP.
Contour's technology is
based on a different approach which the company's founder describes as "an
inherently self-aligning, low cost semiconductor manufacturing process that
obviates the need for (quite so much - editor's moderating note)
photolithography."
The result - if it works at competitive SSD
scales - would be greater efficiency of usable storage capacity compared to the
raw semiconductor assets (chip area multiplied by the number of layers and
processing steps) which went into making it. Resulting in lower cost SSD
storage.
See also:-
Efficiency as
internecine SSD competitive advantage |
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| Contour names new CEO |
Editor:- April 23, 2014 - Contour Semiconductor
is a new (long time in development) company which I only learned about this
week via a couple of my linkedin contacts.
You might want to learn
more about them too.
Why's that?
“Contour’s new
chip technology has the potential to be every bit as disruptive to the solid
state flash market as flash was to hard disks drives” says Saul Zales who
was
named
Contour's new CEO in a press release yesterday.
Saul Zales is well
qualified to judge those markets - as his background includes flash or SSD
related business development at some well known SSD companies - namely
Fusion-io and
Intel. | | |
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"It’s tempting to
offer an “origin story” about solving these problems and addressing
the $25 billion NAND flash memory market opportunity with a new chip cost
profile.
The truth is I just wanted a CD-ROM that wouldn’t become
damaged while I listened to my music in my car. I wanted solid-state memory at a
cost per bit as low as a CD-ROM or a DVD." |
| Daniel Shepard, CTO &
Founder at Contour
Semiconductor - in his blog -
Welcome
to Contour (April 21, 2014) | | |
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