Top 10: Key Products: Dram - Brief Article

Electronics Times, June 26, 2000

Founded in 1978 by engineers from Mostek and Intel, the first product from Micron Technology in the US was a 64Kbit DRAM, produced in December 1981 and with the smallest die size in the industry.

US firms had dominated the early 1 and 4Kbit DRAM markets. But recession delayed US ramp-up to 16Kbit in 1976, and the Japanese industry was able to gain a significant share of the 16Kbit market.

By mid-1979, 16 companies were producing DRAMs, and the Japanese accounted for 42% of the market.

Early on, the Japanese fixed on a conservative design for their 64Kbit DRAMs, which allowed them simply to scale up existing process technology and use CMOS. US firms went for new designs and new process technology.

As a result, the Japanese firms gained a head start down the experience curve.

The scale up of 64Kbit DRAM production had caused a rapid reduction in price which, combined with the general recession in the US in 1985, caused all but two American merchant IC companies to withdraw from DRAM production. By 1990, the US market share had fallen to only 2% of 4Mbit devices.