Micron sees high demand for SSD, suffered some production issues

Bit Tech reprots memory maker Micron saw its SSD orders soar by 20 percent in the last financial quarter. Micron president Mark Adams says 17 percent of the company's NAND production goes into own-brand SSDs, a figure that rises to 35 percent when you include rebrands by other SSD makers. Adams also mentioned that the company suffered some production issues at 20nm, and added that interest in SLC and TLC is increasing.

Adams also confessed that his company has been experiencing some issues with a drop in process size. 'We saw a slowdown in our 20nm ramp related to manufacturing issues,' Adams told press, 'but we still expect production crossover in three to six months. While cheap multi-level cell (MLC) parts account for around 80 to 85 per cent of the company's wafer production, Adams claimed that interest in faster single-level cell (SLC) and tri-level cell (TLC) components are increasing, with the remaining production capacity split evenly between the two.

Not that Micron is resting on its laurels: 'On the NAND technology front, we are making steady technical advancements with both our planar and 3D NAND technologies.' Adams claimed. 'We began sampling our 20nm TLC NAND flash with selected controller companies, and we'll begin production in calendar Q1 [early 2013.]'

The DRAM market isn't doing so well though, pricing of DRAM remains in freefall and Aams says Micron had only partial success in pushing price back up again by reducing production output. While lower prices are good for consumers, the other side of the coin is that major DRAM manufacturers are forced to reduce their capital expenditure budgets, which means lower research and development budgets and thus fewer breakthroughs and slower adoption of new technology in the commercial DRAM market.