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Numonyx, the flash memory joint venture set up by Intel and STMicroelectronics, was telling visitors to its Electronica stand that it has a good cost structure, a reasonable debt structure, a capital-optimized manufacturing strategy and a scalable technology.
"We took out the cost structure we needed", Philippe Berge, Numonyx EMEA vice president told Electronics Weekly at Electronica.
By that he means Numonyx took from Intel and ST only the resources it needed to run the joint venture and was not burdened with legacy costs.
Debt, according to Berge, is a very manageable $450m, and manufacturing is affordable. "We've put in place a manufacturing strategy which is very efficient at optimizing capital spend", said Berge.
First part of that strategy is to extend its share of its manufacturing joint venture with Hynix to one third. This gives it a third of the output of Hynix's 300mm Wuxi fab in China. This will be used for NAND flash.
In Israel and Singapore it has two fully depreciated eight inch fabs which will be used mainly for NOR with a bit of NAND in Singapore. Numonyx also has a foundry agreement with Elpida for NOR.
The 300mm Catania fab shell called M6, which came from ST, has not been facilitated, and a decision will be taken in 2010 to either do so or not. Meanwhile negotiations with the Italian government will determine whether the approximately half billion dollars of grants approved by the EC will continue to apply to M6.
Berge said that Numonyx did not have to pay royalties to Toshiba and SanDisk except for a royalty payment on microSD card technology paid to SanDisk.
Asked why Numonyx wanted to be in the NAND business, which has become a pricing bloodbath, Berge replied that Numonyx mostly serves the wireless business where they are less exposed to pricing pressures.
Berge said that Numonyx is in one third of all cell phones made worldwide and has a third of the NOR market. Its NAND market share is in the low single digits.
Asked how he could compete on cost with Spansion making its NOR in a 300mm fab, Berge replied: "We made the conscious decision not to invest in 300mm for NOR because we felt there was no market justification for investing in a NOR fab. We cannot saturate a NOR fab and, if you don't saturate the fab, the cost advantage of 300mm is not so obvious. Meanwhile the NOR market is not growing (in $ terms) so we went for capital optimization."
Asked if Numonyx's floating gate flash technology would continue to scale, Berge replied: "Today most of our production is at 65nm. We have 45nm at an early industrialization phase (not yet sampling) and next year in volume. At 32nm one way to go is a 32nm floating gate, another way is phase change. At 32nm we will be able to make phase change cheaper than floating gate."
Asked if he could make phase change as dense as floating gate, Berge declined to give a definitive answer.
See also: Mannerisms, the blog of David Manners. Updated twice daily, it's the distinctive, entertaining, authoritative and never dull commentary on the semiconductor industry, from someone who knows. Sign up for the Mannerisms eNewsletter.