Micron opens GDC in Hyderabad; bets on memory market recovery

Micron Technology Inc. recently celebrated the grand opening of its Global Development Center (GDC) in Hyderabad, India. The site will play a key role in contributing to the development of technologies behind breakthroughs in a wide range of areas, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning {ML).

Jeff VerHeul, senior VP of Non-Volatile Engineering, Micron, said: “We are excited about the new data center. We are growing a substantial team. We are now approaching 200 engineers. We are giving major programs to teams here from day one. The wealth of talent in India is great. We have teams in Hyderabad and Bangalore.”

Speaking about the memory and storage markets, VerHeul added: “The ASPs have fallen. We have stated that there is strong demand, with improvement over the next year. We do look at the emerging memory technologies. Specifically, there are many parts, mobile products, emerging memory, etc.”

Dr. Scott DeBoer, executive VP, Technology & Products, Micron, said: “There is greater demand for memory densities. Higher performance and greater density is important for autonomous driving, etc. The need for memory expansion is great for applications. If you look at edge, there are power-sensitive needs. NV, with high performance, is needed. We do process development of memory technologies. Density, power, cost, etc., are all key.”

Micron is a user and manufacturer of IoT devices. At the edge, there is stringent demand for power. Micron sees that in many other applications as well, and consider the segment as a growing opportunity. More computes need to be enabled at the edge. From some applications, there is spectrum of needs. Some new and emerging memories combine latency, with fast power, compute.

Talking about autonomous driving, VerHeul said: “I am the owner of a Tesla 3. It does things that imply that, its not a flawless device. That’s about 3-5 years away. The rate of development of technology is growing very fast. It is also a case of regulatory hurdles.

“It may seem easy to think about taking a car from point A to point B. But, what happens on a snowy day? Does the car have to take into account the boundary conditions. Greater compute power and memory is required to make this fool proof. Micron is developing future memories.

“We are in partnership with Intel as of now. Our first system products are due in next few quarters. We also had a public project with Sony. We also had a project with STT MRAM with the Singapore Government. Certain memories are more applicable for embedded, and some for high density.”

DeBoer added: “We also have a mobile business, which is a robust one. We are doing the right things in working with the chipset partners and the OEM partners. We are aligning our offerings with their requirements. It should change the user behavior. A large part of smart manufacturing in semiconductors is within our facilities.”