In addition to a DRAM recovery, the NOR and NAND flash memory market has been extremely active. The volume of requests for Spansion and Numonyx flash memory has tripled over the last two months.

The SSD market has been one of several factors that have boosted demand for NAND flash memory and, as a result, boosted NAND flash prices, too. While this trend will likely continue to benefit Micron and SanDisk, it is equally likely to work against STEC in the longer term.

Buyers can expect price erosion for NOR flash memory for the rest of the year, but prices will stabilize in 2010, according to market researcher IC Insights.

The 50-page report from research firm Objective Analysis said that Braidwood's flash memory is less expensive to install because it resides directly on the motherboard and will offer all the same benefits of an SSD at a lower cost.

Word on the street is that Micron is seeking to enter the NOR flash market. Some also speculated that Intel wants to unload its interest in Numonyx.

Cloud computing and flash-based storage, two fast-emerging IT technologies, are driving each other forward as users of Internet-based services like social networks demand near-real-time access to ever-growing amounts of data.

The Flash Memory Summit brought a range of opinions on the state of the NAND industry, scaling, 3-bit-per-cell and solid-state drives (SSDs).

Memory chip makers will offer more sophisticated flash drives for smartphones - technology that will be comparable to the solid-state drives (SSD) found in laptops today.

A technologist from Sun Microsystems has commented NAND vendors are going down the wrong path by racing each other in process technology--at the expense of customer needs. He was also critical of SSDs for servers, saying the emerging technology is still too expensive.

China-based foundry Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing has announced the successful development of its 0.13-micron embedded flash process.

BTG International has accused several technology giants--including Apple, Dell and Sony--of infringing five patents related to flash memory technology by using chips from Samsung Electronics.

Apple said that it has made a US$500 million prepayment to Toshiba for flash memory chips and indicated the market is stabilizing. Intel, which makes flash chips jointly with Micron, is also seeing a recovery in pricing.

While the current economic environment is imposing severe constraints on the semiconductor equipment industry, the primary driver for increasing profitability for leading-edge chipmakers is still Moore's Law...

Dubbed single mode level cell (SMLC) technology, Fusion-io says products using the enterprise class flash offer a cost-effective MLC-based solid-state solution with the endurance and performance of SLC at a much lower cost-per-gigabyte.

SanDisk chief Eli Harari delivered some odd news for folks tracking the memory market: Flash memory prices and demand are actually rising.

With flash memory scaling coming under increasingly sharp questioning, Toshiba (Tokyo) researchers said they have developed a double tunnel layer technology for SONOS-type memories that could be scaled to the 10 nm generation. At the 2007 IEDM, Toshiba presented a SONOS-type memory with a 1.2 nm silicon nanocrystal layer capable of supporting 100 Gb densities at the 15 nm generation.

Spansion said in a statement that the decision is consistent with other chip manufacturers in the industry that are also suffering from decreased demand for flash memory.

Spansion, one of the world's largest makers of flash memory chips, on Monday offered a grim sales outlook for the current quarter, citing a slowdown in demand as customers shut down factories. Spansion also said it is cutting cost of goods sold by about 25 percent and cutting operating expenses.

SanDisk may have just concluded a multibillion-dollar patent licensing lawsuit with Samsung which could determine the future of both SanDisk and the flash industry at large. As SanDisk considers a US$5.8 billion takeover offer by the flash giant, private arbitration has given Sandisk rights to a technology that may well hold the future of flash memory.