By Jayashree Adkoli
In an effort to provide two-fold to three-fold increase in memory density over conventional Dynamic random-access memories (DRAMs) at comparable costs, MonolithIC 3D Inc. has rolled-out a new 3D DRAM technology.
According to a press release, MonolithIC 3D – a company focused on 3D-IC technology - unveiled the new monolithic 3D DRAM technology to provide increased memory density at comparable costs.
As a provider of semiconductor design and fabrication to create monolithically integrated three-dimensional circuits, MonolithIC 3D has leveraged ‘ion-cut’ technique in the new monolithic 3D DRAM technology to stack high-quality single crystal silicon layers at low thermal budgets.
According to a press release, the ion-cut is the dominant technology used for producing silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers for logic technologies currently and has been in manufacturing for over a decade.
Zvi Or-Bach, president and CEO of MonolithIC 3D, said in a statement, “The DRAM industry faces several difficult challenges today with scaling and, in particular, with lithography. Companies using our monolithic 3D DRAM technology can reduce their lithography risk and get a much better return-on-investment for their fab equipment.”
MonolithIC 3D made the first public presentation of the new monolithic 3D DRAM at the AVS (News - Alert) 3D workshop, recently. In addition, the technology was announced with an invited presentation at the American Vacuum Society 3D Workshop in San Jose.
Deepak Sekar, chief scientist of MonolithIC 3D was quoted saying in a blog “…the industry has been aggressively pursuing monolithic 3D approaches for NAND flash memory wherein litho steps are shared among multiple memory layers…Toshiba has their version called Bit Cost Scalable (BiCS) Technology, while Samsung (News - Alert), Hynix and Intel/Micron have their own approaches. The common thing with all these approaches is the use of polysilicon for making NAND flash transistors.”
According to Sekar, the NAND flash memory industry has been using the monolithic 3D approach since long, however DRAM industry could not, because NAND flash can live with polysilicon transistors but DRAM cannot.
Consequently, to introduce the monolithic 3D approach to DRAM, MonolithIC 3D applied single crystal silicon to these 3D memories and came up with key innovations such as stacked single crystal silicon layers produced with low thermal budget; and a novel monolithic 3D DRAM architecture with shared litho steps, said Sekar, in a blog.
At the presentation, Sekar said, “We use a 3D stacked architecture and share lithography steps among multiple memory layers. The NAND flash memory industry has been pursuing 3D technology with shared lithography steps with polysilicon transistors for some time now. At MonolithIC 3D Inc., we use single crystal silicon transistors, and that allowed us to apply these concepts to DRAM.”
Apart from the AVS 3D workshop, MonolithIC 3D also presented its logic technologies at the CMOS Emerging Technologies Workshop at Whistler, Canada and at a 3D workshop at the International Conference on Technology & Instrumentation in Particle Physics in Chicago.
In recent news, MonolithIC 3D announced the beta release of IntSim v2.0, a simulator for 2D and 3D-ICs. The IntSim v2.0 is designed to evaluate 2D and 3D implementation alternatives and understand and optimize monolithic 3D chips.
No comments:
Post a Comment