Winbond Ships One Billionth Serial Flash Memory

Winbond Electronics Corporation, supplier of Serial Flash and inventor of the Multi-I/O Serial Flash architecture, has reached a milestone – the company has shipped more than one billion SpiFlash memories. Additionally, Winbond announced it is quickly ramping production of its 90-nanometer (90nm) SpiFlash memories at the company’s 12-inch-wafer fabrication facility in Taichung, Taiwan.

Winbond is the first supplier to manufacture Serial Flash memories on 12-inch wafers, bringing volume to the tightly supplied Serial NOR Flash market. Winbond’s 90nm Multi-I/O SpiFlash family ranges from 1-megabit (1Mb) to 128Mb densities and features the popular Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI), Dual-SPI and Quad-SPI, allowing for the industry’s highest performance.

Serial Flash Growth Continues
"Worldwide Serial Flash shipments have grown from less than one billion units in 2006 to 2.4 billion in 2009, and are expected to reach 3.8 billion units generating 2 billion dollars in revenue by 2013," said Alan Niebel, founder and CEO of Web-Feet Research, Inc. "Winbond, one of the largest suppliers and a pioneer in this segment, has played an important role in enabling the migration from Parallel Flash to Serial Flash. Considering the present shortage in the Serial Flash market, Winbond is well positioned for growth as one of the few suppliers that is significantly increasing capacity across all densities in 2010."

"We are very pleased with the success of our SpiFlash Memory product line, which in the last few years has reached shipments of over one billion devices," said Tung Yi Chan, president of Winbond Electronics Corporation. "With increased capacity from our 12-inch wafer fab, we are now ramping production of our 90-nanometer SpiFlash products and will likely ship near one billion units in 2010 alone."

Increasing Market Share, Broad Range of Applications
Based on Web-Feet Research’s Serial Flash market data, Winbond’s unit market share has grown from a few percent in 2006 to almost 20 percent in 2009. Winbond’s 2010 outlook positions the company well to reach over 35 percent of the worldwide total available market for units by year’s end. Key applications driving Winbond’s SpiFlash memory growth include desktop and notebook PCs, optical disc drives, hard disk drives, and digital televisions. Winbond currently holds more than 40 percent worldwide market share in each of these major Serial Flash applications, which use SpiFlash memory as a space-efficient, cost-effective alternative to ordinary Parallel Flash. Other Serial Flash growth applications include LCD monitors, DVD and Blu-Ray players, WLAN, DSL, network equipment, set-top-boxes, printers, cordless phones, ULC (ultra-low-cost) mobile phones, and field programmable gate arrays.

90nm SpiFlash Family Enhances Original,
Sets Stage for 58nm
Winbond’s original SpiFlash memories were the industry’s first Multi-I/O Serial Flash products, with Dual-SPI (W25X) devices introduced in 2006 and Quad-SPI (W25Q) in 2007. Winbond’s Quad-SPI architecture achieves greater than eight times the performance of ordinary SPI Serial Flash memories and offers small erasable sectors for added flexibility. As a result of Winbond’s pioneering efforts, the popularity of Multi-I/O Serial Flash has grown significantly, and most all Serial Flash suppliers have followed Winbond’s original command set and operation.

Winbond’s new 90nm W25Q SpiFlash family builds on the earlier generations but now offers densities up to 128Mb, with performance and security enhancements. Winbond’s next generation 58nm Flash technology will also be manufactured at the Taichung 12-inch wafer fabrication facility and is scheduled for introduction in 2011.