Aug 18th - Elpida: DRAM price erosion exceeded expectations

"The spot price of 2Gbit DDR3 started dropping sharply in April and reached $1.09 today. And since the mega-quake, the DRAM price has halved. We didn't expect things to get this tough," said Yoshitaka Kinoshita, COO of Elpida Memory, Inc.

Elpida's downbeat business results for the first quarter of this fiscal year, which started in April, reflect the harsh environment. Sales almost halved to 95.7 billion yen (US$1,196million*), just 54% of the 176.3 billion yen reported for the same period of the previous fiscal year. The operating loss was 3.8 billion yen and the net loss 7.3 billion yen, the third straight quarter in the red for both operating and net income.

* Original figures are in Japanese yen. The exchange rate is roughly US$1=80 yen.

Mobile IT products, digital consumer electronics, servers and PCs are the major DRAM applications. Elpida estimates about 20% of DRAMs produced worldwide end up in mobile gear, 10% in digital consumer products, 10% in servers and 60% in PCs. If we think of the market in terms of a weather forecast, the server market will be fine, but the mobile IT market, supposedly the sweetest spot, is becoming cloudy, rain is already falling on digital consumer electronics and the PC market is almost in the midst of a typhoon, according to Yukio Sakamoto, president and CEO of Elpida.

In these circumstances, Elpida doesn't expect the DRAM market to recover until September in the best case or until November in the worst case. The projection is based on the timing of inventory adjustment of end products by vendors and of DRAM chips by chipmakers. New products to be introduced for the year-end holiday season should also help spur recovery.

Reflecting the severe environment, Elpida's quarter-to-quarter bit growth was 15% for the first quarter, though the company expected 20-30% growth in May. For this quarter, in light of the economic uncertainty triggered by the downgrading of the US bond rating, Elpida lowered its bit growth forecast to 10%. For this fiscal year, the company lowered the bit growth forecast to 40-50% from the figure of more than 50% it announced last May.

Aug 18th - Elpida: Legacy DRAMs can be extended to 1Xnm

New memory technologies are attracting attention, but customers prefer to continue using the tried and true DRAMs and flash memories they know, and if the JEDEC specifications were relaxed a bit, the life of current DRAMs could be extended to 1Xnm, Yukio Sakamoto, president and CEO of Elpida Memory, Inc., said at a business results briefing.

Elpida envisages introducing EUV technology when the process reaches 1Xnm. But Sakamoto said that even with the EUV technology, it is doubtful whether the specifications the JEDEC standards would require at that time could be fully satisfied.

Instead, as many customers want to keep using the current DRAMs and flash memories they are familiar with, it would be neat if the life of current memories were extended, said Sakamoto.

Elpida joined a government-supported ReRAM development project that also involves the University of Tokyo and Sharp. But Sakamoto doesn't expect a new memory, no matter what the technology is, to enter the market any time soon unless it offers higher performance and lower cost than current memories. "We are developing ReRAM, but it's a kind of insurance and we have no intention of marketing it in the near future," he said.

As for short-term strategy through 2012, Elpida intends to take a lead or set the market trend by quick process migration.

Elpida forecast demand for 4Gbit DRAM will emerge coinciding with the introduction of Ultrabook PCs in the second half of this year. "We will start using 30nm process for the 4Gbit DRAM in the second half of this year. Elpida and a Korean company are currently the only ones able to supply 30nm 4Gbit DRAM chips. Any chipmakers that can't migrate to 30nm will be out of the running. 4Gbit DRAMs will be Elpida's main products for both PCs and mobile devices in 2012," said Sakamoto.

To maintain process leadership, Elpida intends to rapidly shift 4Gbit DRAM to 30nm and 25nm. Its subsidiary Rexchip started mass production of 30nm 2Gbit DDR3 DRAM in June and will have changed its process completely to 30nm by the end of this year. If you factor in the Hiroshima fab, Elpida will have migrated 60% of its capacity to 30nm by the end of this year.

To lower power consumption, Elpida has developed mobile DRAM based on High-k/metal gate transistor technology whose power supply can be lowered to 1.0V from the current 1.2V. 1.0V operation will cut power consumption about 30%, according to Elpida. The company has already completed development of a 30nm HKGM mobile DRAM chip and intends to sample it in the first quarter of 2012.

Through silicon via (TSV) technology is also essential for lowering power consumption. Having sampled four-chip-stack 8Gbit TSV DRAM back in June, Elpida is currently developing 30nm 16Gb TSV DRAM (32bit I/O) and wide I/O (512 bit I/O) TSV mobile DRAM. "Sometime next year, TSV DRAMs will start contributing to our revenues," said Sakamoto.

As already reported, Elpida's business has lost money for three straight quarters. The company stressed its technical advantages and future plans in the analyst briefing, but the stock market is unimpressed. The share price sank to its lowest level so far this year on the day after the briefing.