 | |
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| TWSE: 2337 | |
| Industry | Semiconductors |
| Founded | 1988 |
| Headquarters | |
![2M-BIT [256K x 8] CMOS Flash Memory ADSV-931 Mini Docking Station - LAN module - Macronix 28F2000PQC-12C4-93548.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/13/ADSV-931_Mini_Docking_Station_-_LAN_module_-_Macronix_28F2000PQC-12C4-93548.jpg/170px-ADSV-931_Mini_Docking_Station_-_LAN_module_-_Macronix_28F2000PQC-12C4-93548.jpg)
Macronix International Co., Ltd. (MCIX; often shortened to Macronix) is an integrated device manufacturer in the non-volatile memory (NVM) market. The company manufactures NOR Flash, NAND Flash, and ROM products for the consumer, communication, computing, automotive, and networking markets. Its headquarters are located in Taiwan.
Headquartered in Taiwan, Macronix was established in 1989. By 1997, the company was a global supplier of Mask ROM and EPROMs. [1]
In 2012 the company developed a process to prolong the life of solid state drives. [2]
Macronix developed specialized memory chips for the consumer electronics industry, including those used in Nintendo's 3DS and Switch devices, [3] and Samsung's wearable electronic devices. [4]
The company presently has more than 4,000 employees -- approximately one-fifth of whom serve in research and development roles -- and a market capitalization of approximately US$1.56 billion. Macronix's total revenues in 2023 were US$888 million, slightly more than one-half of which was derived from NOR flash, followed by ROM revenues at approximately one-third.
As of March 2024, Macronix has had 9,200 patents granted.
Macronix owns two in-house wafer-manufacturing foundries -- one for 200-nanometer wafers, the other for 300-nanometer wafers. The company also has sales and support branches in Europe, the United States, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and China.
Recognizing the market opportunity in proprietary semiconductor designs becoming high-volume, open-market flash memory, Macronix leveraged flash memory customized for specific customers into widely available devices for broader applications. [5]
Macronix has developed partnerships with various microcontroller manufacturers to pair its OctaBus flash memory with the partners’ MCUs. [6]
In the automotive market, Macronix’s automotive-grade ArmorFlash and OctaFlash memory families are being adopted by automotive-electronics semiconductor and system makers such as Nvidia and NXP to bring highly secure data storage to vehicles. [7] [8] [9]
In 2021, Macronix became the first NVM manufacturer to bring 1.2-volt, 120MHz Serial NOR flash to mass production, contributing to a new generation and broader range of devices requiring ultra-low-power flash memory. [10] [11]
Macronix in 2022 introduced its memory-centric computing concept, developed to enable AI-focused computation within flash devices. [12] [13] Also in 2022, Macronix received EE Times Asia’s Best Memory Product award for the second consecutive year. [14]
Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both use the same cell design, consisting of floating gate MOSFETs. They differ at the circuit level depending on whether the state of the bit line or word lines is pulled high or low: in NAND flash, the relationship between the bit line and the word lines resembles a NAND gate; in NOR flash, it resembles a NOR gate.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the world's second-most valuable semiconductor company, the world's largest dedicated independent ("pure-play") semiconductor foundry, and its country's largest company, with headquarters and main operations located in the Hsinchu Science Park in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Its majority is owned by foreign investors, and the central government of Taiwan is the largest shareholder. In 2023, the company was ranked 44th in the Forbes Global 2000.
The foundry model is a microelectronics engineering and manufacturing business model consisting of a semiconductor fabrication plant, or foundry, and an integrated circuit design operation, each belonging to separate companies or subsidiaries.
Phase-change memory is a type of non-volatile random-access memory. PRAMs exploit the unique behaviour of chalcogenide glass. In PCM, heat produced by the passage of an electric current through a heating element generally made of titanium nitride is used to either quickly heat and quench the glass, making it amorphous, or to hold it in its crystallization temperature range for some time, thereby switching it to a crystalline state. PCM also has the ability to achieve a number of distinct intermediary states, thereby having the ability to hold multiple bits in a single cell, but the difficulties in programming cells in this way has prevented these capabilities from being implemented in other technologies with the same capability.
The 90 nm process refers to the technology used in semiconductor manufacturing to create integrated circuits with a minimum feature size of 90 nanometers. It was an advancement over the previous 130 nm process. Eventually, it was succeeded by smaller process nodes, such as the 65 nm, 45 nm, and 32 nm processes.
The transistor count is the number of transistors in an electronic device. It is the most common measure of integrated circuit complexity. The rate at which MOS transistor counts have increased generally follows Moore's law, which observes that transistor count doubles approximately every two years. However, being directly proportional to the area of a chip, transistor count does not represent how advanced the corresponding manufacturing technology is: a better indication of this is transistor density.
Microchip Technology Incorporated is a publicly listed American corporation that manufactures microcontroller, mixed-signal, analog, and Flash-IP integrated circuits. Its products include microcontrollers, Serial EEPROM devices, Serial SRAM devices, embedded security devices, radio frequency (RF) devices, thermal, power, and battery management analog devices, as well as linear, interface and wireless products.
SONOS, short for "silicon–oxide–nitride–oxide–silicon", more precisely, "polycrystalline silicon"—"silicon dioxide"—"silicon nitride"—"silicon dioxide"—"silicon", is a cross sectional structure of MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor), realized by P.C.Y. Chen of Fairchild Camera and Instrument in 1977. This structure is often used for non-volatile memories, such as EEPROM and flash memories. It is sometimes used for TFT LCD displays. It is one of CTF (charge trap flash) variants. It is distinguished from traditional non-volatile memory structures by the use of silicon nitride (Si3N4 or Si9N10) instead of "polysilicon-based FG (floating-gate)" for the charge storage material. A further variant is "SHINOS" ("silicon"—"hi-k"—"nitride"—"oxide"—"silicon"), which is substituted top oxide layer with high-κ material. Another advanced variant is "MONOS" ("metal–oxide–nitride–oxide–silicon"). Companies offering SONOS-based products include Cypress Semiconductor, Macronix, Toshiba, United Microelectronics Corporation and Floadia.
The "22 nm" node is the process step following 32 nm in CMOS MOSFET semiconductor device fabrication. The typical half-pitch for a memory cell using the process is around 22 nm. It was first demonstrated by semiconductor companies for use in RAM memory in 2008. In 2010, Toshiba began shipping 24 nm flash memory chips, and Samsung Electronics began mass-producing 20 nm flash memory chips. The first consumer-level CPU deliveries using a 22 nm process started in April 2012 with the Intel Ivy Bridge processors.
The "14 nanometer process" refers to a marketing term for the MOSFET technology node that is the successor to the "22 nm" node. The "14 nm" was so named by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS). Until about 2011, the node following "22 nm" was expected to be "16 nm". All "14 nm" nodes use FinFET technology, a type of multi-gate MOSFET technology that is a non-planar evolution of planar silicon CMOS technology.
The Open NAND Flash Interface Working Group is a consortium of technology companies working to develop open standards for NAND flash memory and devices that communicate with them. The formation of ONFI was announced at the Intel Developer Forum in March 2006.
In electronics, a multi-level cell (MLC) is a memory cell capable of storing more than a single bit of information, compared to a single-level cell (SLC), which can store only one bit per memory cell. A memory cell typically consists of a single floating-gate MOSFET, thus multi-level cells reduce the number of MOSFETs required to store the same amount of data as single-level cells.
Spansion Inc. was an American-based company that designed, developed, and manufactured flash memory, microcontrollers, mixed-signal and analog products, and system-on-chip (SoC) solutions. The company had more than 3,700 employees in 2014 and was headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Spansion was a joint-venture between AMD and Fujitsu.
Universal Flash Storage (UFS) is a flash storage specification for digital cameras, mobile phones and consumer electronic devices. It was designed to bring higher data transfer speed and increased reliability to flash memory storage, while reducing market confusion and removing the need for different adapters for different types of cards. The standard encompasses both packages permanently attached (embedded) within a device (eUFS), and removable UFS memory cards.
Read-only memory (ROM) is a type of non-volatile memory used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be electronically modified after the manufacture of the memory device. Read-only memory is useful for storing software that is rarely changed during the life of the system, also known as firmware. Software applications, such as video games, for programmable devices can be distributed as plug-in cartridges containing ROM.
High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) is a computer memory interface for 3D-stacked synchronous dynamic random-access memory (SDRAM) initially from Samsung, AMD and SK Hynix. It is used in conjunction with high-performance graphics accelerators, network devices, high-performance datacenter AI ASICs, as on-package cache in CPUs and on-package RAM in upcoming CPUs, and FPGAs and in some supercomputers. The first HBM memory chip was produced by SK Hynix in 2013, and the first devices to use HBM were the AMD Fiji GPUs in 2015.
Weebit Nano is a public semiconductor IP company founded in Israel in 2015 and headquartered in Hod Hasharon, Israel. The company develops Resistive Random-Access Memory technologies. Resistive Random-Access Memory is a specialized form of non-volatile memory (NVM) for the semiconductor industry. The company’s products are targeted at a broad range of NVM markets where persistence, performance, and endurance are all required. ReRAM technology can be integrated in electronic devices like wearables, Internet of Things (IoT) endpoints, smartphones, robotics, autonomous vehicles, and 5G cellular communications, among other products. Weebit Nano’s IP can be licensed to semiconductor companies and semiconductor fabs.
The Chinese semiconductor industry, including integrated circuit design and manufacturing, forms a major part of mainland China's information technology industry.
