Trapped charge, phase change memories to grab 30% of flash market by 2012

By Colleen Taylor, Contributing Editor -- 6/26/2007

The flash memory market is set for some significant changes, some analysts say.

According to a recent report from Monterey, Calif.-based market research firm Web-Feet Research Inc., trapped charge and phase change memories are forecast to capture 30.7 percent of the $56.5 billion flash memory market in 2012. Contrastingly, trapped charge memories, primarily NROM, accounted for just 6.1 percent of the $23.7 billion flash memory market in 2006.

The firm said that this dramatic increase is expected as smaller process technologies bring SONOS NAND variants such as TANOS and BE-SONOS into the NAND market.

In floating gate technologies, charge is stored in a polysilicon layer; in SONOS-based trapped charge technologies, charge is stored in a nitride layer sandwiched between dielectric materials.  Phase change memories store bits by switching a chalcogenide material between amorphous and crystalline states.

“As floating gate flash technologies encounter scaling challenges beyond the sub-40-nm generation, trapped charge and phase change technologies are poised to continue NAND and NOR flash scaling,” Gregory Wong, Web-Feet’s VP of technology research, said in a statement.

Currently, the vast majority of trapped charge memories are employed, the firm said: NOR flash for code storage and execution and accounted for 15.7 percent of the NOR flash market in 2006.  This is forecast to reach 28.1 percent in 2012, Web-Feet said.  An even steeper transition is expected for trapped charge memories in the NAND flash market, which are set to increase from less than one percent today to 30 percent of the NAND flash market in 2012.  Phase change memories are forecast to capture 5.5 percent of the NOR flash market by 2012.

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