This is the first of a multi-part blog on creating a memory technology, covering the steps from a manager or founder making a request to the eventual fruition and creation of a product.
In 2002, I was asked (as part of a team) to create a new memory technology to surpass flash memory. When I heard this, concerned thoughts went through my mind.
First was a feeling of great concern, “can I/we really do this?” Then curiosity came over me. I felt that, well this is what’s wanted, I wonder what might be possible, what haven’t people tried? I looked around and realized that I was not alone, there were not only those on the team I was a part of, people were advancing the art of memory – we could draw on that work . This helped lessen the worry over actually being able to get it done.
I started looking around at what unique things our labs had done. Some of it, I felt, had veered off into speculative dreamland. Not that I’m opposed to dreamland, just that I want to go into a good one, not a dark place.
I spoke to another team member about the viability of one of these ideas, that of using the lower resolution of lithography on plastic substrates (vs. that on Silicon chips) to make memory. He said that my work would be doing the best I could to make a memory system based on that idea.
I did feel intrigued by some of the possible degrees of freedom. For instance, the plastic layers could be laminated in as many layers as we wanted. Of course, there were interesting challenges there, like how to align vias (layer to layer connections) in substrates that flexed and moved!
I started to look at what had been done. First step for me was to look at the memory market and its trajectory – where was it today and how fast was it moving? What kind of curve, i.e. any signs of leveling out? My take there was, “Wow, memory is dense and cheap and getting better fast!”
So then, the total addressable market and some other factors like power consumption during write and idle didn’t seem to match up to the market needs. Even so, I moved forward and looked at how to improve this plastic substrate memory technology. Oh, and did I mention that I voiced these concerns to my bosses first? Yes. I was told go ahead and so I did.
Going deeper, it looked like writing to a group of memory cells on this plastic substrate would melt the substrate. Plastic (polymers) are so much better at insulating than the Silicon that makes up a conventional chip. We ended up taking advantage of this, the insulating properties provided raised temperature that accelerated the write speed!
That’s it for this section. More later…
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