Unity partners with Applied, Silvaco

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Unity Semiconductor Corp. has struck partnerships with Applied Materials and Silvaco to develop a revised version of its next-generation NAND flash architecture. The company hopes to have its technology ready in time for terabit chips that could hit production in 2014.

Unity revised its architecture and business model a year ago when Dave Eggleston was named chief executive. It now aims to deliver a three-fold density increase while creating no more than five new process steps for existing NAND fabs.

For one of those steps, Applied will help develop a process using its atomic layer deposition system. Unity's architecture calls for using atomic deposition at a high aspect ratio to deposit a novel conductor material up to 32 layers deep in a narrow vertical NAND structure. To date, atomic deposition has been done for insulators, not conductors and rarely at such a high aspect ratio.

For its part, Silvaco will provide simulation software combining data from traditional electronics sources as well as new ionic sources. The software could be available later this year.

Micron is helping Unity develop its other process steps as part of an existing partnership and investor relationship. Micron is currently the only licensee of the technology that Unity eventually aims to license widely.

The startup now sees itself primarily as an IP licensing company. However, it still plans to get a minority of its business from selling chips of its own design, starting with a terabit flash chip that could act as a primary cache for enterprise systems.

The terabit chip could have write speeds measured in hundreds of Mbytes/second at costs below a dollar/gigabyte, said Eggleston.

Unity is making the first formal disclosures of its revised architecture at a conference in Japan later this week. The company is "well funded" based on a recent VC round and an investment from Micron, said Eggleston.