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 The European Commission has just imposed a fine of 331 million euros on those memory manufacturers who entered into pricing agreements between 1998 and 2002. Samsung has taken a hit of 145.7 million euros, against 56.7 million for Infineon, 51.4 million for Hynix, 20.4 million for Hitachi, 17.6 million for Toshiba, 16.6 million for Mitsubishi and 1.8 million for Nanya. The Elpida-Nec-Hitachi and Nec-Hitachi joint-venturess will also have to pay 8.5 and 2.1 million euros.
Micron was also part of the cartel but is immune from fines as it blew the whistle on the operation in 2002. Because of their cooperation during the inquiry, Infineon and Hynix have benefitted from reductions of 45% and 27%, against 18% for Samsung, Elpida and NEC. Hitachi, Toshiba, Mitsubishi and Nanya will have to make do with the 10% reduction given to all those involved for having reached an agreement with the commission. |
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Intel has just announced that, in partnership with Micron, it's 25nm NAND flash MLC is now being mass produced and delivered to its clients. Announced in February, this 8 GB flash is the first to be produced at such a fine engraving, which means it measures 167mm² against 172mm² for a 4 GB 34nm chip. Intel and Micron had announced mass production for the second quarter, which means they're on time.
 The first Intel SSDs based on this chip aren't however likely to arrive before the last quarter. We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the chip architecture has changed, which requires certain controller adjustments. Each page now goes up in size from 4 KB to 8 KB and a block from 512 KB to 2 MB. In view of the fact that a NAND chip can be read or written per page and that data can only be delected by block, the new chips should have a positive impact on the price of SSDs but could have a slightly negative impact on performance. |
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