Instant-On Tablets Driving SSD Growth

Semiconductor Manufacturing & Design’s David Lammers recently covered Applied Materials’ analyst meeting and published an article on the growth and wider adoption of solid-state drives as well as what is driving wafer-level packaging and through-silicon vias.

Below are a few highlights of the report.

• The market acceptance of tablet computers will drive wider adoption of solid-state drives (SSDs), forcing personal computers to also adopt instant-on capabilities.

• “Tablets are moving the industry to solid state drives. We had been hoping for a long time that netbooks would do that, but it turns out that tablets are moving the industry to SSDs. That will require significant investments, sending capex to all time highs. The knock-on effect will be to instigate real redesigns in PCs and laptops. People want instant on, or at least faster on,” Splinter said.

• The equipment industry will benefit from the higher wafer fab equipment (WFE) intensity required to build the NAND devices used in SSDs. WFE intensity will increase from about 6 percent of spending in recent years to the low teens going forward.

• Randhir Thakur, an executive vice president in charge of the Silicon Systems Group, said the trend toward mobile devices, including tablets, will drive wafer-level packaging and through-silicon vias. “Our customers’ customers are demanding it,” he said.

• “The growth opportunities for our business are enormous,” Thakur said, adding that as leading edge chips go from 65nm to 28nm more than 150 steps have been added. “Our served available market in foundries is almost doubling from 40nm to 20 nm. Complexity is good for Applied Materials, and we want to make sure we take full advantage of this and enable investments by our customers,” Thakur said.

To access the full article visit the Semiconductor Manufacturing & Design website.