Little growth for SRAMs
By Staff -- Purchasing, 4/22/1999
The sram market will see modest growth over the next several years as the market becomes more fragmented and more memory is integrated into microprocessors.The sram market reached $3.9 billion in 1998 and will grow to $4 billion this year and reach only $4.2 billion by 2001, according to Semico Research. "It's very nominal growth and it has a lot to do with the fact that we are seeing the influence of more embedded sram into systems or in microprocessors," says Brian Matas, an analyst with Semico. The integration is taking away from discrete unit shipments. "That's why we are seeing the slowdown in market growth," he says. In fact, the percentage of discrete srams used for cache will rapidly decline as sram circuitry will be on board the processor.
It's getting easier for manufacturers to put more functionality on a chip because of die size shrinks. As semiconductor process technology moves to .25 and .18 micron, it's easier to place more functionality on the chip.
While discrete sram shipments for cache memory will decline, shipments to networking and telecommunications equipment manufacturers will increase, especially for higher-density parts. Buyers can expect a shift to 8- and 16-megabit devices this year and greater demand for fast srams--products with access times of 30 nanoseconds or less. Fast srams represent about 36% of the market.
Bandwidth is a big driver in srams, says Ken Yapp, marketing manager for srams for Samsung Semiconductor. "Traditionally the sram market has been driven by PC cache. Now it is fragmenting and there are all kinds of application-specific solutions," says Yapp.
"If you use a sram designed for cache applications, you're not getting the bang for your buck because you're not able to get 100% of the performance," he says. That's because cache sram is not designed for the requirements of telecommunication equipment.
Samsung and other chip companies make an nt sram for networking applications that allow srams to use 100% of the bandwidth. Networking equipment also requires higher densities. Eight megabit is the most popular density with networking applications, and that will move to 16 megabit. Higher densities provide more bandwidth.
"Bandwidth requirements in networking are almost quadrupling every year," says Yapp. "Back in early 1998, we were talking about 4-megabit srams. In late 1998, it was 8 megabit. Now people are demanding 16-megabit solutions."
Yapp says demand will increase for lower power, higher performance srams because of the growth of cellular phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs).
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