Micron’s costly new Boise plant will make memory chips. What is memory, anyway?
The $15 billion plant that Micron Technology Inc. announced Thursday for its Boise headquarters campus will make memory chips. That will not only bring memory-making back to Boise for the first time since 2009, it will be a big step in the reshoring of semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S.
But what is memory, anyway?
When most people think of semiconductors, they’re likely thinking of one of two things: how fast their smartphones or computers do tasks like opening web pages and loading videos, or how many photos, videos and other files their devices have room to store.
The speed of your phone depends primarily on its processing chip or chips. Those aren’t memory chips. But data processing depends in part on a processor’s ability to temporarily store and retrieve data at lightning-fast speeds. That requires memory chips.
Not all memory is the same. The type of memory your phone’s — or your computer’s — processors use for speedy data handling is one kind. The type that stores your photos and videos is another.
The processor-helping memory is called dynamic random-access memory, or DRAM (pronounced dee-ram). It is a type of random-access memory that is the most common kind of memory in laptops and workstations.
A key thing to know about DRAM is that it loses data without electricity. It’s volatile. It’s not going to hang on to your photos if you pop the battery out of your phone. Its memory is fleeting.
The preservation job is left to flash memory.
There are two types of flash memory: NAND and NOR. Those are mathematical or logic terms: NAND is short for not-and, NOR for not-or.
NAND is far more widespread than NOR. NAND has long been used in phones, cameras, music players and computers. NAND chips keep their data when the electric current ends. It is nonvolatile. Its memory is permanent. You can put pictures or other files on a USB flash drive, lose the drive in the back of a desk drawer, find it five years later and open the documents intact.
The more flash memory your phone has, the more photos and videos you can store on it. A decade ago, a phone with 16 gigabytes of memory was cool. Today, you need at least 128 GB to be cool.
DRAM and NAND are what Micron makes. Within DRAM and NAND, there are all kinds of variations. Many of the more than 6,000 people Micron employs in the Boise area conduct research and experiments on ways to make memory products faster, less expensive and more efficient, and to make products that serve specific market needs.
The demand for memory worldwide has exploded. Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra often touts the rising role of memory in motor vehicles, artificial intelligence, and large-scale data processing and storage inside the planet’s ever-growing number of server farms, such as the one that Meta, formerly Facebook, is preparing to build in Kuna, south of Boise.
You can learn more about memory by searching any of the terms in this article online. But now you should know enough to impress your friends at your next party. “NAND chips keep their data when the power is turned off!” you can say. If they smile and excuse themselves, try to understand.
This story was originally published September 1, 2022 at 12:35 PM.
CORRECTION: This story has been revised to reflect that a Micron spokesperson told the Idaho Statesman on Sept. 6, 2022, that the company employs more than 6,000 people in the Treasure Valley, not the nearly 7,000 that a Micron executive had told the Statesman in early August.
